My Little Phoenix
by TTAvatarfan
Summary: Astrid rescues Hiccup after he was taken by pirates four months ago. However, his mind and body have been shattered by starvation, abuse, and worse. Now, Astrid is left to pick up the pieces and try to find the mind of the boy she loves amidst the tendrils of darkness that hold him hostage. But the healing process will be long and difficult.
1. A One Night Butterfly

Astrid Hofferson was only twenty years old, but she had seen more crazy and terrible things than many people three times her years.

"Ease him down. That's it. Astrid, go grab those poultices. We'll need them after we clean him."

She knew she would see many more crazy and terrible things before she died.

"Poor lad. Poor, poor lad, such a beauty he was, and then for this to happen…"

But none of them would ever come close to being as mind-numbingly awful as the sight before her eyes now.

Hiccup. Her poor Hiccup, barely a gleam of his former self, so small in that wooden tub they had placed him in. But Venka had the right of it; he was so filthy, covered in dust and bruises and dried blood. His lovely russet hair had become matted in places, and Astrid could see some of the black filth coating it clinging to the other woman's wrists and hands as she held his lolling, unconscious head.

The healer, Venka, a woman not much older than Astrid herself, lifted her head from her patient to regard the girl.

"Could you help me?" Venka asked, "His bath will go faster if we both work on him."

Putting the poultices down on a table, Astrid moved to stand by her side. Venka handed her a bar of soap and told her to lather her hands. Astrid did so.

"Wash his hair," the healer instructed, "I'll wash everything else. It'll be easier to look at his injuries once he's clean, and he'll feel better for it.

Astrid nodded curtly, taking over Venka's job of holding Hiccup's head in her hands. As soon as Venka began to scrub his shoulders, Astrid prompted herself to move and began to run her fingers through his filthy hair, colored gray and black in places with the dirt.

Astrid's body was here, cleansing Hiccup of the physical evidence of his ordeal. Her mind was a million miles away over the land and across the sea.

Some four months ago, pirates had attacked one of their sailing longboats, and though they had all fought with the might and ferocity of Thor, there had simply been too many of them and too few Vikings to fend them off. Astrid and Hiccup's father had been among the Vikings on that ship. In order to keep the pirates from slaughtering them all, Hiccup had offered himself as a hostage. The pirate captain, a man who might have been handsome if he'd had more teeth, had looked him up and down, and then leered at him in a way that made _Astrid_ feel naked. She could only imagine how uncomfortable he had made Hiccup, who was on the full receiving end of that look, felt.

"You sure?" the captain asked, "You'll never see any of these people again, you know. I'll make sure of it."

Hiccup had glanced back at the other Vikings, all being held at sword point or gun point. He had met Astrid's eyes, and Astrid had seen them shine with suppressed tears. She had seen the Adam's apple in his throat bob as he swallowed thickly. But his voice had come out steady when he answered, "I'm sure."

"Very well!" the pirate captain had laughed, and signaled to two of his men to shackle Hiccup's wrists in front of him before they began to shuffle him onto the gangplank that onto the pirate's ship. As he was shoved none too gently along, Hiccup had craned his neck over his shoulder desperately for a last look at the people he loved. Astrid had seen his shoulders begin to shake then and the tears well up, a sign of his sudden and overwhelming fear. It was so visceral, she could feel it clog her throat and sting her eyes. She lunged forward, only to have Stoick pull her back down, a tight mask of barely suppressed rage and grief on her chief's face. The pirates leaving with their captain still had their guns pointed at them.

"Hiccup, please…!" she had begged, "Please don't do this…I'll kill you myself! I will, you idiot!"

"I love you," Hiccup had replied, voice trembling and tight, "Just don't forget that. See you around, okay?"

And then he had reached the pirate's ship, the gangplank was pulled up, and they had sailed away, the Vikings unable to follow thanks to the holes in their sails and the blow to their hearts.

And Astrid hadn't forgotten. She had let his last words to her fuel on a four month long hunt that had led her all over the known world searching for Hiccup, from Sweden to Iceland, from Gaul, to Rome, from Italy all the way to Briton. They had found Hiccup in a crude little cell on an island just off the coast. The prison had been abandoned; perhaps because those that had run it had gotten word that the Vikings were coming. They had been smart to flee then, but Astrid still wished her axe could have slurped up their blood and chewed on their bones in vengeance for the agony they had put her through.

Even more so when she found the state Hiccup had been in.

He had been completely naked, alone and in the rank darkness. How long had he been alone, she wondered? The only light available came from a lit lantern attached to her belt, and when the light touched him, his skin had gleamed as white and sickly as a corpse, speaking of months without exposure to the sun. His skin had clung to ribs, hipbones and spine, evidence of a body so starved it had been forced to cannibalize itself in a last ditch effort to keep itself alive. When she had touched him, his skin was clammy and too hot, strands of hair heavy with sweat sticking to his forehead: a fever born from an infection in one of his many wounds.

Worst of all, he had jerked from her touch, eyes dilated and absolutely swollen with terror. Hiccup had scooted into a corner and mashed himself against the concrete wall so tightly it looked like he was trying to disappear into it. He shook hard, terrified tears welling in his eyes and spilling onto his cheeks. His breath came in rapid bursts, and he appeared to be on the verge of hyperventilation.

It was then that Astrid noticed the copious amount of blood coating his rear and thighs. Some of it was dried. Some of it was fresh, and it was leaking under him currently, the wound torn by his frantic movements. She was struck dumb and breathless for a moment as she tried to absorb what that could mean.

But thankfully, she was pulled out of her sick musings by Hiccup's voice. She suppressed a shudder when she heard how thin and raspy it sounded, the sound of someone who hadn't had a drop of water pass their lips for days.

"No more," Hiccup had moaned in a barely audible rasp, "Nomorenomorenomore, please _please_. Oh Astrid, where? Where are you? It's dark and I'm _so cold_ and tired and I hurt! Take me home, shh now, easy boy, I won't hurt you, trust me trust me…"

Astrid blinked hard as she watched him curl into a defensive ball rock back and forth, burying his head into his knees he had pulled up to his chest. He was muttering a soothing string of words she recognized as the words he used to calm wild dragons like it was the only thing he had in the world to cling onto, and she felt her heart crack in her chest.

Astrid shuffled across the filthy stone flood until she was crouched in front of him. "Hiccup, it's me. It's Astrid. I'm here, and I'm taking you home."

"No," Hiccup shook his head and lifted it, "Stop it! I'm not falling for it this time"-

"Hush." She touched his shoulder, and he flinched violently.

"Oh go away. Or, am I dead? Please tell me I am. I want to go home, I want to go home…"

Astrid touched his shoulder again, and when he didn't react, she ran her fingers up his neck and into his hair, rubbing gently. His tears flowed faster, and he leaned into her touch with all the desperate energy of a freezing kitten finding a warmth hearth, or a person who hasn't felt a kind touch in months.

"Astrid…?" he whimpered, and Astrid wanted to burst into tears at how _hopeful_ his voice sounded. It was a voice deprived of hope for too long and shown it for the first time, a mind shown sunshine after only knowing darkness.

"Yeah," Astrid had answered, and then smiled. "I love you."

At those words, without warning, Hiccup had flung himself away from the wall and dove into her arms, pressing his face into her stomach. His back heaved and he released a guttural, screaming sob that pulled itself straight from his hollow, deprived gut. Astrid's arms had wrapped around him in return and she had folded herself over him, feeling his prominent ribs shudder and jerk as the tortured, delirious, starved animal in his soul cried its release.

And after he had cried himself into exhaustion, Astrid had taken him home as she promised. And now he was here, brought out of the womb of darkness and being reborn in the clean sunlight and warm water in the loft of his home.

Astrid scrubbed through his hair slowly, watching the dirt wash away and reveal the warm russet hair she knew so well. Her fingers dug in luxuriously, massaging his scalp and working out the mats gently. She jumped when she heard a moan escape him, thinking perhaps she had hurt him. But his eyebrows were smooth and relaxed and his breathing was easy. It was a moan of pleasure, then. Smiling softly, she continued her ministrations, working along the base of his skull and running her fingers upwards. Another moan and a shiver rewarded her efforts, and a warm thrill danced around her heart.

Venka laughed softly. "There's a lot of nerve endings in your scalp," she explained, "That's why it feels so good when someone brushes your hair. It forces you to relax."

Astrid nodded in agreement. She recalled many evenings holding Hiccup's head in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair, enjoying the way the silky strands clung to her fingers and released his wonderful scent into the air. More often than not after a few hours of her ministrations his head would grow heavier and heavier until he eventually drifted off. Or at least, she thought he drifted off, if his soft snores were anything to judge by.

"He'll need all the relaxation he can get, I supposed, if he's going to get better," Astrid said quietly.

"Hmm," Venka affirmed. _And all the pleasure he can grasp, because it's going to be few and far in between all the pain from here on out,_ she thought. "If you're done on your end, I'm done on mine."

"Yeah." Venka didn't fail to notice that although Astrid's hands were no longer soapy, her fingers were working down his neck almost absently, bringing forth little sighs and twitches of awareness from him. She was touched.

"Well, let's get him dried and under the furs, then we'll see what we can fix," the healer said, standing up. "Ready? Lift him up."

Astrid hooked her arms under Hiccup's armpits and hauled him up out of the tub and upright onto the floor with surprisingly little difficulty. He was no heavier than a puff of smoke anymore. She looked away respectfully as Venka began to dry his naked body with a large cloth, focusing instead on his detached metal leg propped up against the opposite wall. When the healer gave the assertion that she was finished, both women worked to lift the boy to his bed and deposit him among the many layers of furs that lay upon it. He immediately began shivering and continued even after Venka and Astrid had pulled several blankets on top of him. When Astrid began to look concerned, Venka explained to her what it meant.

"It's the fever," she assured her. "This shivering is only going to drive it up higher. We'll have to find the infection and drain it. Stay by his head unless I need you."

Astrid sat down on the bed and lifted his head into her lap while Venka began her examination by his shoulders. Judging by her lack of reaction as she skimmed down to his torso, she wasn't finding anything of significance that Astrid could see apart from some minor cuts and bruises.

Well, nothing of significance until the healer pulled down the furs and exposed the evidence of Hiccup's starvation.

A rush of air left Astrid's lungs without her consent. Hiccup had never been stout to being with, but now it appeared as if he would blow away if a strong wind came along, or break in half if he was held too tightly.

What had they done?

Venka felt along his sunken belly and ribs, murmuring, "that rib was broken at one point, but at least it knitted back together" before bending down and placing her ear over his abdomen. Astrid watched, unsure of what to make of her actions, before the she lifted her head and regarded Astrid gravely.

"I don't hear any gut noises," Venka sighed, "It's just another sign as to how long he's gone without food. He's so empty his guts don't have anything to move along inside them. Now, don't worry lass, we'll fix that soon enough."

Astrid shook herself. Of course. If she had anything to say about it, Hiccup wouldn't be able to turn around without her forcing something down his throat. He would gain weight whether he wanted to or not, she thought with a determined grin.

Venka had moved down Hiccup's body a little further and was feeling along his kidney and bladder area. Astrid watched with dismay as Hiccup's brows drew together tightly and a small whine escaped his throat. Venka sighed. She had been afraid of that; it was a sign of severe dehydration, but hopefully nothing that a good supply of fresh water wouldn't fix. Astrid smoothed her fingers along his temples in reassurance, and Venka moved down to inspect his legs.

"You said there was blood on his thighs when you found him?" the healer asked, lifting his good leg slightly.

"Yeah. A lot."

"Maybe he got cut badly somewhere around there and it was left to go rancid. Could be the source of our infection."

However, after several minutes of looking and finding nothing but a few abrasions that weren't deep enough to cause the copious amount of bleeding Astrid had described, Venka had to refute her hypothesis. The older woman straightened up from the bed and sighed despairingly as she realized she only had one option left.

"Sorry love," she whispered to Hiccup. She looked up at Astrid. "I'm going to need you to come down here and hold one of his legs. I need to get a look at his behind."

Astrid's eyes widened in disbelief, but she obeyed, gently setting Hiccup's head down on the pillow and making her way down to the end of the bed by Venka's side.

"Just hook his leg over your shoulder, Astrid," Venka instructed. She had to hold back a snort at the blush that adorned the younger girl's face as she did as she was told, lifting Hiccup's bad leg and letting bend at the knee as she rested it on her right shoulder. The blanket barely covered his dignity as it slid away from the movement, and Astrid only blushed deeper when a slice of smooth, pale thigh was revealed. She averted her eyes and swallowed hard, again choosing to focus instead on Hiccup's metal prosthetic still propped innocently against the wall.

Venka meanwhile set Hiccup's other leg on her shoulder, removed the blankets entirely, and began her examination. It wasn't a moment before Astrid, still looking away, heard the healer announce, "Yep, here's the infection. Oh, the gods save this poor boy, what did he do to deserve this?"

"What is it?" Astrid asked, instantly alert, but not moving her eyes.

Venka gave another quiet noise of disbelief and sympathy. "Well, he has several tears in his back passage. The infection has set up in there because, not surprising, a lot of toxic stuff passes out of there."

Astrid couldn't suppress a sympathetic groan. She couldn't imagine how painful that act had to have been for him. As to how he had received those injuries, it couldn't have been…_that_…

"But that's not the worst part," Venka continued.

"It's not?" Astrid whispered in horror. What couldn't possibly be worse than the implication that Hiccup was…was…

"Some of the tears are already healing while some are still fresh. It's one of the ones that healed wrong that's causing the infection. That means that he-yes, there's no doubt about it- he was raped several times."

Astrid's brain screeched halt. "What…?"

"I know. _I know, _love. But you can't think about that right now.

"I…Venka, how could you say something like"-

"The fact this happened to him means that he needs you now more than he's ever needed you in his life. Now you can stand there with your mouth open or you can grab me those poultices I had you mix before."

Afraid that if she opened her mouth, tears and obscenities would flow out of her, Astrid silently set Hiccup's leg back down on the bed and walked over to the shelf she had set the bowl of poultices on. After she grabbed them and went back to Venka's side, she was aware of the beat of her heart in her ears, the angry fire scorching in her veins, and the wind whistling through the new, gaping hole that had just been torn in her heart. And a single word had accomplished it all, a tingling, fearful, raging numbness that she knew would always live inside her conscious in association with this memory from this day forward.

"Thank you," Venka murmured, and motioned for Astrid to hold his leg again. When she had done so and the younger girl had averted her eyes, Venka set to work cleaning the wounds.

"What am I going to tell his father?" Astrid mused with despair.

"Don't worry about that now," the healer replied, "Stoick is still out there hunting down those pirates or whoever it was that locked Hiccup up. And you know he won't return until he has every single one of their heads mounted on a spear and their guts used to string his men's instruments."

"Right." Astrid nodded, and glanced out the window. "And once I let Toothless in, he's not going to leave Hiccup's side for anything in the world."

She felt bad about leaving Hiccup's faithful friend outside. The dragon had nosed his rider and whimpered plaintively all the way from the docks when Astrid and the other Vikings arrived home with him until they reached the door to the Haddock household. He looked so heartbroken when Astrid had shut the door on him and told him he had to remain outside (because she knew out of worry and love that Toothless would constantly be underfoot) and told him that she would let him in as soon as she could. The dragon had simply groaned in misery and planted himself firmly on the ground in a forced vigil.

"And now comes the part he's going to hate the most." Venka's voice stuck itself in the middle of Astrid's musings, "I'm going to have to reopen the wound so we can drain it."

Venka picked up a small, clean knife, and Astrid heard the barely discernable but sickening sound of the knife cutting through flesh.

"Perfect." Venka murmured to herself, and just as she was about to grab a cloth to aid her in draining the wound, all hell broke loose.

Hiccup began to twitch and whimper, and Astrid immediately began to croon to him, murmuring soft words of reassurance and rubbing the knee of his that she held. However, this only seemed to make matters worse. Hiccup made a feeble attempt at jerk his legs away, and when he failed to do so, this seemed to send him into a blind panic. His breathing began to grow rapid but erratic, and Astrid could feel beads of sweat prickling along his leg. The gazes of both women were drawn to the head of the bed just in time for them to see his eyes snap open and a scream filled with the terror of a hundred demons tear itself loose from him.


	2. He's Stronger Than the Flames

Hiccup began to twist and writhe with all the strength his shrunken muscles could provide him with, his eyes open but not seeing anything around him. And shrunken though they were, when powered by the adrenaline his body was pumping him with born from fear, his muscles had a substantial amount of power left to them. Enough power that he could injure both Venka and Astrid, and in his current state of unawareness, himself as well.

"Astrid, hold down his arms!" Venka ordered, "I'll get his legs."

Astrid handed the thrashing leg of Hiccup's over to the healer woman and rushed to the head of the bed. Without thinking, she lifted him into a sitting position, planted herself behind him and held him tight against her, pinning his arms to his sides with all of her strength. Venka held his legs down by his knees, leaning all of her weight against him.

After a few minutes, Hiccup's meager reserves of strength were sucked away and he proved to be no match for the two Viking women. His screams dwindled into pitiful whimpers and his thrashing died down into tremors that wracked his body like chills. His head fell limply backwards, and Astrid allowed it rest against her shoulder. With a sigh, she and Venka relaxed their hold on him.

Suddenly, Astrid, who had her arms around Hiccup's middle, felt his stomach contract, and the words "Venka, get the basin!" barely had time to pass through her lips before he leaned forward and vomited.

Astrid, who held him upright as his back heaved and his belly clenched, didn't know if she should feel relieved or concerned that only a small trickle of bile and some saliva was all that his stomach had to expel. Even so, his body heaved and shuddered even after it was empty. Finally, Astrid heard a dull, sickening pop, felt Hiccup's ribs shake as they sucked in a jagged breath, and felt him fall limply against her once again. She didn't even realize how hard she was breathing until the room was completely silent.

"What on earth was that?" Astrid asked, bewildered.

Venka raised an eyebrow at her from the end of the bed. "Consider where I was just poking around. What do you think he thought was happening?"

Astrid's eyes widened and a small "oh" escaped her lips. For the hundredth time that day, she held back tears and decided to hide her grieving face in Hiccup's hair instead.

The healer shook her head. "Don't worry about it, lass. It's not his fault; he doesn't know he's safe. All he knows is that he's still scared and that everything still hurts, so like any other creature in pain, he fights to protect himself."

Astrid wrapped her arms around his middle a little tighter and murmured against his hair, "I'll make him feel safe. I'll protect him from now on."

"I know you will."

Venka retreated to the wooden tub still set up in the center of the floor, and the sound of water dripping filled the empty silence. She returned a moment later with a cloth and handed it to Astrid, telling her Hiccup's face needed to be cleaned. Astrid nodded numbly and tenderly began to wipe the sweat that beaded on his forehead, neck, and shoulders away. His breathing was a little off, she noticed, and pressing her fingers to the pulse-point in his neck, she felt that his heartbeat was too fast and weak. Feeling helpless, Astrid bowed her head and pressed her lips to his temple, feeling saddened by how his usually healthy scent of warm sunshine and pine forests was covered by the sour smells of sweat and terror. She found herself asking again what he had done to deserve this.

The healer had meanwhile changed out the soiled blankets for fresh ones, and taken up her post once again at the end of the bed between Hiccup's legs. Figuring she meant to continue draining the infection, Astrid rose to help her. However, Venka raised a hand to stop her.

"Stay there, lass," she said gently, "You can just hold him. It's obvious you both need it. I can manage."

The Viking girl sat back down heavily, cradling Hiccup to her chest protectively once again. This time when Venka began poking around the sensitive area, Hiccup's only protest was a feeble cry and a spasmodic shudder. Astrid crooned soft murmurings of "it's okay" and "easy sweetheart, oh don't make that noise please, I can't…"

And when Hiccup began pleading in a fervent, desperate voice "No more, no more please no more I can't take it! It hurts, it hurts so bad," she couldn't hold back the tears anymore.

"His fever's taken an upward turn. Astrid, hurry with that packed ice! If we don't get it down, he'll die."

"I have it, Venka!"

"Good, put it by his neck and head. It'll cool the major arteries up there."

"Hiccup, hold on, don't you dare give up!"

"His pulse is too fast. Come on lad, keep breathing…"

_Hiccup wished he could stop breathing. He very much wished his heart would spontaneously burst inside of his chest. He felt hot and sick and he couldn't stop crying no matter how hard he tried. _

"I'm here. I'm here with you, Hiccup. Feel my hand? I love you so much…"

"_Your woman won't want you when I'm through with you, boy."_

"_Easy now, shh…shh, trust me…" Hiccup murmured to himself through his tears._

"_You want to make some noise? I'll make ya holler then."_

_Something tore audibly, and Hiccup curled in on himself like a dried up insect. A moment later, he feels hot fluids rush up his rear. He didn't scream though, instead he-_

"Get the basin, Venka! He's going to throw up!"

"His body can't take much more of this. His pulse is beating so hard I can see it in his neck."

"Is that...?"

"Blood. Oh dear Thor and all the rest…"

_His stomach was so empty, but it strained anyway, and he brought up blood-tinged semen, the last thing that made it down his throat. _

_Hiccup's attacker didn't even slow down. He kept pounding into him, hands gripping bony hips, taking him the same way a hound takes a bitch in heat; no feeling, just hormone-driven instinct tinged with a desire to dominate._

"_You don't deserve dignity. No someone as pretty as you. This is the only position you deserve to be in, and it's only one you will be in for the rest of your life."_

_He can't take this anymore. This time he does scream, and he swears he feels a vocal cord burst and fill his throat with blood._

"He's going into shock! We need to"-

_Ithurtsithurtsithurtsit-_

"HICCUP!'

_It all goes dark._

Something within Hiccup coils and stretches repeatedly like a cat waking up after a long nap. It knows he's safe and free and tingles in his ribs, nuzzling his heart dancing up his spine where it urges him to bask in the sunlight and moonlight. It wants him to breathe in air free of mildew and sex and anxiety. It wants him to look and see where he is. _You're home!_ it breathes excitedly. _Look who has you in their arms!_

Hiccup opens his eyes with a herculean effort; the lids are as heavy as boulders and his eyes themselves hurt. Luckily, it is night, as far as he can tell by the smell of the damp grass filtering in through the window and the sound of the crickets chirping. And he smells something else, something pressed right against his nose, something sweet and warm and soft.

Astrid.

The fog that has his mind under firm siege dissipates a little, and he can feel a solid warm shape that presses all along the length of his body. She's asleep, lying next to him, and Hiccup can feel her arms encircling him, holding him to her. The back of his head is being cradled tenderly by one of her hands, and his head itself is resting in juncture of her neck and shoulder, her chin atop his head. The other arm is around his shoulders protectively, and in his fetal position and still too-warm brain, he feels much like a child in the care of its mother; Astrid is a wall against all outside intrusions, and as long as she's here, nothing can ever hurt him again.

He tries moving his heavy limbs that feel numb with disuse, and he gives a small pained whine as he feels where Venka made her incision to drain the infection. He shudders involuntarily but violently.

"_Welcome to the home of a dirty mind, little whore."_

"_I'm not a…stop it, that hurts! Stop it!"_

Now he's whimpering for a whole different reason, and he presses his face a little tighter into Astrid's shoulder.

"Hiccup?"

Astrid's voice is thick with sleep, but she sits up quickly, looking down at his face. She sees the glimmer of moonlight in his eyes, and she gasps when she realizes he's awake. He blinks at her. His vision is fuzzy.

"Home?" he asks, his voice a dry rasp.

"Yes," Astrid replies with joy. She runs her fingers up through his bangs, pushing them out of his face. It's cool now. "Thank the gods. Your fever broke. Oh! Hold on, I'll be right back."

She carefully steps out of bed and leaves Hiccup's field of vision for a minute. He hears shuffling, and suddenly she back with a small cup in her hands. She sits on the bed beside him again and situates his head onto her knees.

"Water," she explains, and brings the cup down to him until the rim touches his lips. His eyes are so heavy though, and the fog is beginning to fill his brain with a heady intensity. Astrid tilts the cup forward until the cool liquid is touching his upper lip encouragingly. Suddenly, the fog pulls back enough for his brain to register that she is giving him _water_ and this is the first water his dry mouth and throat has encountered _in so long_.

His body is eager, but weak, and Astrid watches as his lips begin to work and suck at the cup, drawing the water out. Inhibitions almost nonexistent in his barely-awake state, Hiccup's eyes slip closed in bliss and a tiny squeak of pleasure leaves him.

However, closing his eyes probably wasn't the best idea, because his body registers this as consent on his part to fall back asleep. The fog floods his brain again after a few moments and overwhelming exhaustion begins to snuff out the alert gleam in his body.

Astrid watches him grows listless, his breathing slowing into sleep almost in front of her eyes. Luckily, most of the water is gone already and she removes it from Hiccup's lips to place it on the floor. She removes Hiccup gently from her lap and lays down beside him again, pulling him into a position similar to one she had him in before he woke. Although now, her arms encompass more of his body; one arm rests across the back of his shoulders and the other wraps around his waist. She lets her head rest momentarily on top of his, letting him be draped in her hair and in turn resting her nose in his hair. His breathing is so steady; so rhythmic that she's sure she's lost him to slumber, so Astrid is surprised when he mumbles a single word into her shoulder.

"Safe?"

The word is so quiet, so full of cautious hope waiting to be crushed without remorse (like it probably has been over and over again over the course of the past four months) that she feels her chest tighten. Astrid wraps herself around him determinedly.

"Yes. You're safe now. I've got you."

Astrid feels his subtle sigh against her skin, a sigh full of contentment and someone reassured who desperately needed it. This time, his breaths lengthen and deepen into true sleep. And to her delight, she hears him begin to snore softly.


	3. The Scent of Awakening

The light that sneaks through the window in the loft the following morning is warm and gentle, like a lullaby sung at dusk to a child at the end of a day filled with adventure. However, this isn't what woke Hiccup. If anything, it only forced him to burrow even further under the furs that covered him, where with a few sleepy moans and a deep, contented sigh he plunged into blissful darkness once more. Sure, he could feel the throb of a few aches inside his body making pleas for his attention, but his exhaustion had overridden the pain by far.

Later that afternoon, the aches seemed to conspire to flare all at once, and flare intensely. Hiccup opened his heavy eyes with a groan, feeling as if his entire body was throwing a tantrum. Every part was competing for attention to be attended to first. His muscles were weak and sore, and in the wake of his fever all of his insides felt as if they had been put through a meat grinder and dumped back into his throbbing husk. He felt every heartbeat in all of his limbs, all of his wounds (especially the one in his rear, which burned like hot iron), and beneath the skin of his lessened ribcage. However, amidst all the pain, he allowed himself the wonderful opportunity to feel the skin over his ribs stretch and relax as his ribs expanded and contracted with his breath. He felt himself listening to his heartbeat in his ears against his pillow, and came to a wonderful realization.

He was alive.

He was alive and the time of unknown terror was over.

The knowledge smelled like ambrosia and tasted like milk and honey. It seeped into his head, trickled down his throat and curled up warm and cozy in his breast. Suddenly, the invisible lock and key that held his muscles tight with anxiety and the perpetual alarm that he had kept in his brain were shut down, smashed, and cast away. Hiccup's body melted grew impossibly heavier with the realization that he didn't constantly have to be on alert anymore, didn't have to constantly tense up in preparation for a blow, and that touch was a force that would heal him and not destroy him. He began to drift off again, shutting heavy eyes…

A particularly painful throbbing in his bladder brought him to complete awareness and forced his eyes back open. Hiccup winced, but the sensation didn't surprise him; he couldn't remember the last time he had relieved himself. It had obviously been far too long, and now the poor organ felt as if it was about to burst. He could practically feel his pulse beating in it.

Well, he couldn't keep laying here, not unless he wanted to end up having an accident. Hiccup propped himself up on one arm and hissed, immediately feeling faint from even that slight motion. He kept his head lowered for a moment until the blood made it back to his head. When he lifted it, he blinked away his fuzzy vision, and then came to a realization after scanning the room.

No one was there.

No one was there, the arm holding him up was already trembling, and if he was that weak and dizzy, there was no way he was going to be able to sit up long enough to use the pot. And sadly, he honestly felt too sick to care about his pride. Pride had no place when you felt weak as a newborn baby and your bladder was aching to the point that you were beginning to sweat. So, he called out into the emptiness of the house.

"Astrid? You here somewhere?"

Oh, Odin's beard, his voice sounded _awful_. He barely even recognized it as his own. Yet, his vocal chords were vibrating in his throat, so it had to be his, no matter how pitiful and raw it sounded.

A moment later, a huge kerfuffle began pounding up the wooden steps that revealed itself to be Toothless with Astrid in tow. The dragon's whole body was wiggling and his eyes were wide with joy. He was crooning hard and excitedly and he bounded over to the bed and place both front feet onto it, sticking his nose next to Hiccup's face. Hiccup laughed softly and placed a hand on Toothless's nose.

"Hey bud," he said, "Miss me?"

Toothless only butted him with his head gently and shoved his nose closer. He waited for Hiccup to hug him and was confused as to why he wasn't doing so. But then, upon closer investigation, he noticed his rider smelled…wrong. He smelled sour like sickness and hunger and sweat, and Toothless made a low worried noise. Why did Hiccup smell like that? What had happened to him?

"It's alright, Toothless," Hiccup assured him, still stroking his nose, "It's okay…"

Astrid walked over to the bed as well, smiling. "If I left him outside one more day, I think he was prepared to claw the door down to get to you."

"No kidding?" Hiccup answered, grinning back at her. "It's just as I thought. He forgot all about me."

The dragon gave an indignant snort that ruffled Hiccup's hair and only made him laugh some more. Astrid leaned over to pet Toothless on the head as well.

"Did you need something, Hiccup?" she asked. "Sorry I wasn't here, I was making some lunch downstairs. I figured if you woke up I'd hear you."

Hiccup sighed and Toothless removed himself from the edge of the bed. "Yeah. I need to…go."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "Go," she repeated.

"Bad," Hiccup emphasized, wincing and crossing his legs.

Seeing that, it clicked in Astrid's mind. "Oh 'go!' Of course you do! Alright, um…"

She moved to the other side of the bed and gazed at Hiccup critically, as if trying to solve a math problem.

"Can you sit up?" she asked.

Hiccup shook his head. "Can't even lift my head without feeling dizzy."

"Alright then. I'll just have to lift you myself."

Astrid bent down then to retrieve something from under the bed, and by the familiar scraping noise it made, Hiccup guessed it was the chamber pot. Just hearing it made the urge to go ten times worse, so he didn't object to Astrid's idea. She removed the blankets, exposing his upper body to the cold air, and he shivered. Carefully, she lifted his torso from the bed, hooking at arm around her shoulder.

"Just let me do all the work, okay?" she said, and then looked at Toothless, who was still standing on the other side of the bed. "Come here Toothless. I need you to help me lift him, please."

Toothless immediately obliged, coming to stand by Astrid's side. The Viking girl continued to lift Hiccup until she had him in a sitting position, and she stopped when he let out a pained groan and tucked his head in the crook of her shoulder.

"Sorry," he whispered, "Dizzy."

"And sitting hurts, doesn't it?" Astrid gathered.

She heard Hiccup swallow uncomfortably and saw his Adam's apple bob noticeably. He paused before answering, "Yeah…that too…"

Trying not to dwell on that fact, she continued to turn him while Toothless helped by nudging him until his legs were hanging over the bed.

"Okay, ready?" Astrid said, speaking to both Hiccup and Toothless, "One, two, three, lift."

Toothless slid his head under Hiccup's other arm and both he and Astrid lifted Hiccup simultaneously. Hiccup's head lolled and his body went limp and heavy. They lowered him onto the chamber pot as quickly as they could. Hiccup moaned and his chest rose and fell rapidly, shuddering with each breath. Astrid watched him go about five shades whiter, and realized he was trying his hardest not to faint.

"Easy," Astrid murmured, and Toothless crooned the same sentiment.

After a few moments, Hiccup's breathing evened, and his muscles relaxed, including his poor bladder at long last. However, the instant Astrid heard the sound of him relieving himself, she also heard Hiccup hiss and let out a whimper that was half pain and half pleasure. Lifting her head, she noticed that his face against her shoulder was pinched tight and his jaw was tense with him gritting his teeth. His lips had also become almost completely bloodless, and Astrid felt the beginnings of panic stir in her chest.

When he was finished, Hiccup felt both weak with relief and like crying with pain. His lower body burned intensely and the urge to faint became enticing clouds of white fluffy smoke in his head.

"Alright Toothless, let's put him back to bed," Astrid said in a tight voice, "And lift."

When they had successfully placed Hiccup back under the warm furs, Astrid stayed with him for a moment, stroking his back and watching his sides heave. Toothless gently placed his head by his boy's stomach and lower body, hoping the heat radiating from him would soothe some of the pain there.

"M'okay," Hiccup mumbled faintly. "Thanks…thanks guys…don't know what I'd do without you."

Astrid smiled. "Be a useless lump that never got out of bed."

"Exactly."

"If you think you'll be okay for a minute, I'll go clean out the chamber pot."

"Of course. I have Toothless."

The dragon rumbled appreciatively and Hiccup could feel the vibrations from his chest through the bed. He reached up and gave Toothless a scratch on his forehead.

Astrid stood up from the bed after giving Hiccup's back a last affectionate pat. She then picked up the chamber pot and carefully made her way down the stairs from the loft, and suddenly noticed something that filled her with dismay. The urine inside the pot was quite a bit darker than it should have been.

_Oh no_, Astrid thought, _No wonder it had hurt him so badly to go. _She would definitely have to ask Venka about this when she returned from her other duties. Hiccup wasn't the only sick Viking in Berk, after all.

Well, until Venka got back, Astrid figured she could at least get Hiccup to drink something. The more he drank, the better he would feel, and Venka did say that they could fix the damage done with a good supply of water.

When Astrid returned with the clean pot, she placed it under Hiccup's bed once more. She was pleased to note that some of the color had returned to his face again, a sure sign that he was feeling better. The small smile he flashed her in greeting was another sign.

"Think you'd be up for something to eat?" she asked. She really wanted to get on making that sharp collar bone peaking from under the blankets disappear, and his still too pale face flush with healthy color again.

Hiccup paused to regard her.

"I probably should"- he began, but Astrid cut him off.

"You will because you don't have a choice." She placed her hands on her hips and tossed her head with a devious smile.

Hiccup lowered his head, keeping his gaze on her through his unruly bangs. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes. "Yes ma'am."

Astrid laughed and ruffled his hair, pushing most of it into his forehead. He blew it out of his face while pushing away the rest and raising an eyebrow at her, still grinning.

"Be right back!" she sang out, already prancing down the stairs. Hiccup sighed happily. Toothless tilted his head questioningly. He knew that Astrid was his rider's mate, but that didn't make their courting behavior any less strange to him. He kept his head firmly on the bed while Hiccup began scratching over Toothless's right eye ridge. The dragon purred contentedly.

A few minutes later, a delicious smell appeared up the stairs with Astrid following after. She was carrying a steaming bowl and a cup of water, which she placed on the floor by the bed when she reached Hiccup's side. She then sat on the bed beside him.

"You can lean against me while you eat, okay?" she offered. Hiccup nodded eagerly, looking forward to having Astrid as a warm, soft, sweet-smelling back rest.

Astrid lifted him under his arms gently and pulled him into her lap, letting the back of his head rest against her shoulder. He glanced up at her, and Astrid was startled by what she saw in his eyes. They were swollen, green pools of longing, love, and gratitude beyond love. They were telling her, _You saved my life, I can't ever thank you enough, but I'll try anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you so much, _to which Astrid responded with a firm kiss to his temple, fighting the tightness in her throat.

She leaned down and scooped up the water first, handing it to Hiccup carefully. She kept her hands wrapped around his unsteady ones and helped him tip the cup back once he had pressed it to his lips. Astrid watched his eyes close and his Adam's apple bob furiously, working hard to pull the liquid into his dehydrated body as fast as possible. He stopped when the cup was halfway empty, letting out a gasp. Astrid took the cup from him, leaned down, placed the cup on the floor and came up with the steaming bowl. Again, she placed it in his hands with her hers wrapped around the bowl as well.

"We're going to take this nice and slow," she instructed, "The healer said your stomach isn't used to having food in it anymore, so if you eat too fast it could shock your system and throw up."

"Alright," Hiccup said, "Slow. Got it."

It was easy to say that, at least until Astrid helped him guide the first spoonful of soup to his mouth. He sipped it, and the warm, rich flavor exploded over his tongue. Suddenly, his dormant digestive system leaped into action. His mouth watered fiercely, and his digestive juices sparked to life. Hiccup tried not to wince when his shrunken, empty belly growled weakly and yawned into a black hole so vast it seemed bottomless. His hunger consumed him, and his only thought was to fill his empty stomach as quickly as humanly possible.

Astrid felt his body begin to shake and heard Hiccup's little desperate whimpers as he began to eat faster. She understood, really she did, that he was a slave to his starving body, and could only do what instinct commanded him to do, which was to survive at any cost. His desperation to eat, and the look of _elation_ on his face made her want to cry. This was how long he had gone without food, so long that a weak soup could fill him with this much pleasure and make him tremble like a leaf in an autumn wind. She wanted to let him suck it all down, especially when she could feel his prominent spine pressing against her front. But then she remembered what Venka had said about him eating too fast and getting sick as a result, and knew that the nourishment would only do its job if it stayed down.

So, Astrid reluctantly began to pull the bowl away. She had to bite her lip when Hiccup's grip on it tightened and he gasped, "Astrid, wait, don't"-

"You can have more in a minute, Hiccup," she assured him, placing the bowl on the floor, "Let's just let that sit for a minute. If you're still hungry, I'll give you the rest."

Hiccup looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he flopped back against her, sighing wearily. Astrid kissed his cheek sympathetically.

"Sorry," Hiccup apologized, "I didn't mean to be difficult."

Astrid raised an eyebrow at him, though he didn't see it. "You're not being difficult. You're starving, Hiccup. Literally. But don't worry, we have all the food you could ever want here, so you won't be starving for long. You'll be as fat as your father by the time I'm finished with you."

Hiccup managed to chuckle softly. "Well, I want to put on weight, but I don't think I want to put on that much weight."

After a few more minutes punctuated only by the sounds of Hiccup petting Toothless's prone head and the sounds of their breathing, Astrid asked Hiccup if he was still hungry. When he answered that he was, she picked up the bowl and again and helped him to eat again. However, this time, he only managed a few more mouthfuls before declaring himself full. Astrid looked into the bowl and was happy to note that it was more empty than full. After placing the bowl back on the floor, she brought up the cup of water again and made him drink the rest of it. He complied with no resistance, settling comfortably against Astrid when he finished.

"That's strange," he said, "I thought I was way hungrier than that."

"Venka said that might happen," Astrid answered. "Your stomach shrunk after all that time without food, so you're going to feel really hungry more often but fill up quickly. It just means we're going to have to feed you several small meals a day. Soon enough, your body will get the idea that food is available now and come out of starvation mode."

"Does this mean you get to be my servant and serve me these several meals?" Hiccup asked cheekily.

"If that's what you want to call it, you weirdo," Astrid replied, tweaking his ear gently.

Hiccup turned around with an effort, startling Toothless, and looked Astrid in the eye. His lips worked for a moment, as if he was trying to think of something profound and appropriate to say, but when he couldn't think of anything, he closed his eyes and leaned forward, pressing their lips together in a soft kiss. Astrid shivered and then responded, her mouth moving against his and bringing her hand up to dig her fingers in his warm, russet hair. Hiccup melted into the sensation completely. This was what had kept him going these past four months of darkness and misery, the thought of being back in the arms of the woman he loved and kissing her like she was the only person on earth.

They parted for air when Toothless barked indignantly, clearly miffed that no one was paying attention to him anymore. He had allowed his rider to stop petting him so that he could eat, but he was done being charitable. Hiccup and Astrid broke apart, red in the fact and laughing giddily. They both patted the dragon on the nose, and laughed more when he shoved his head demandingly further forward. Astrid felt her heart warm when Hiccup turned around again and leaned his forehead against his dragon's.

"I love both of you," he murmured, "So much."

Astrid stroked Hiccup's back. "We know," and Toothless rumbled in agreement.

The girl wasn't the least bit surprised when Hiccup let out a huge yawn as he pulled back from Toothless's forehead, swaying with the cloud of fatigue that had settled on him. Astrid carefully extricated herself from behind him and laid him down, settling him amongst the cozy furs and covering him warmly.

"What…" Hiccup began, before he was cut off by another jaw-splitting yawn, "I only just woke up. How can it be time to sleep again already?"

Astrid laid her warm hand against his wan cheek. "Your body is…beyond exhausted, Hiccup. Not only that, but digesting even that small meal you just had is a lot of effort for it. Just sleep and let your body heal itself, okay?"

Hiccup nodded, eyelids already drooping. He grabbed the hand on his cheek. "Stay?"

Astrid smiled. "Of course."

She climbed onto the bed beside him, wrapping her body around his and draping an arm over his stomach. She placed her head in the crook of his shoulder and felt him nuzzle her hair. Within a few minutes, Hiccup fell victim to the seductive, warm, soft call of sleep, and plunged after it hard. Astrid lay next to him contentedly, feeling the warmth of his body, hearing the purr of his snores and listening to the little gurgles coming from his belly as it happily digested the warm meal. She placed a loving kiss on his neck and sighed, falling into a doze a moment later.

Toothless regarded the pair with curiosity. He knew that Hiccup and Astrid were mates, and he knew that they were a strange pair to him, but this was an extra strange kind of strange. In his world, male dragons protected their mates and females protected their young. But it was very rare that a female would come to the rescue of a friend. Yet, a fierce protective energy was radiating from Hiccup's mate; it was in the way she took care of him so tenderly, the way she had glared at anyone in the past who had dared make fun of him, the way she held him like she could protect him from all the evil in the world. Toothless sighed. Humans were strange creatures overall. Pleasant creatures, but strange all the same.

The dragon curled up on the floor by the bed. Astrid wouldn't be the only one on watch for Hiccup today.


	4. For the Child Forever Gone

"I just realized something," Hiccup said quietly.

"What?" Astrid asked as she cleared away the mostly empty bowl that was all that remained of Hiccup's second meal for the day. He had woken up earlier that evening after his short, hard sleep, and to Astrid's delight, said that he was hungry once more. He didn't need to tell her twice before she had leapt into action. "That it's not a good idea to go sledding during avalanche season?"

Hiccup, who was sitting up in bed, raised his arms over his head and let his back arch in an exultant stretch. "I told you, I learned my lesson. I didn't like being trapped under twenty feet of snow for two days any more than you enjoyed searching for me. Anyway, that wasn't it. It's March now, right?"

"It is."

Hiccup scooted back down under the blankets and sighed, feeling very warm between them, Toothless' head that suddenly appeared on top of his side and sandwiched him to the mattress, and the silky thick soup that now gently filled his belly. After four months of feeling numb with cold in various different ways, this was a sensation he'd learned not to take for granted.

"I missed my birthday," he declared sadly, "It was in February. Then again, at the time, I don't even think I was aware of whether it was night or day though, let alone what month it was."

Astrid chose not to comment on that last part. "Well, you won't miss it again," she said instead, "And how old are you now, gramps? Should I have gotten you a walking cane?"

Hiccup replied, "No, but I'll probably need one next year." He paused to laugh when Astrid did as well. "I'm twenty-one now."

"Yeesh, I better add a pair of eye-glasses to that list," Astrid said as she placed the bowl on a dresser and made her way over to sit next to Hiccup on the bed. She leaned over his prone form with a hand placed on either side of his head. "For now, the only gift I can give you is my lovely face every day."

Hiccup's heart began to pound against his ribs and he sighed over-dramatically. "I guess I'll just have to live with that."

Astrid giggled good-naturedly and then tenderly leaned down a pressed a kiss to his lips. Hiccup happily reciprocated, bringing up an arm to rest on one of her biceps, a little upset that he wasn't strong enough to do much else. Astrid had placed her hands on both sides of his neck. She could feel the eagerness thrumming through his body, but also knew that he still had trouble sitting up for long periods of time, never mind in any condition for a full blown make-session. So, for his own good, she kept the kiss brief, pulling away no matter how much her four-month-long deprived feminine core wanted to practically cannibalize his mouth and make his fingers dig into her back with ecstasy.

She could see her pulling away had been for the best, because Hiccup's cheeks had flushed scarlet while the rest of his face had become alarmingly pale. Toothless nudged his rider's arm worriedly, sensing the change.

"M'fine, Toothless," Hiccup panted, willing for the blood to return to his head.

After making sure that his lips were in fact losing their grey tinge and become pink once more, Astrid bounded down the steps from the loft again with bowl in hand, promising to return momentarily.

Once she reached the bottom, the single, horrible thought that flooded her chest was that Hiccup had been pure before all this had happened. Not just metaphorically in soul, but literally. He had been a virgin as Astrid was still, both of them waiting to give each other their highest value. Now…

Astrid held back tears for the millionth time since this four-month-long heartache had started. It was as if some of the light in Hiccup had been stolen away by those that had pierced him in every way a person can be pierced. They had replaced that light with darkness, and the thought made Astrid feel lost and sick. But a new thought came to her that stopped her knees from shaking and added steel to her backbone. She would be the one to suck that darkness out of Hiccup and take it upon herself. She would do anything, _anything_, to make him pure again. She would ensure the light of the heavens would filter into the holes of his wounded soul and fill him up with liquid exultance and exuberance once again.

_She would_.

As she was finishing cleaning the bowl, Astrid heard a knock on the large wooden doors. A moment later, Toothless came bounding down the stairs, obviously hearing the sound too. He pressed himself close to Astrid's side, a growl rumbling in his throat. Astrid stroked his head soothingly. She couldn't blame him for reacting in such a manner; Hiccup was hurt and very sick, putting Toothless on high alert for any potential threats that could harm his defenseless rider. But Astrid figured she knew who it was.

Upstairs, Hiccup had begun to settle into a doze, not hearing the knocking at the door and not hearing Toothless leave. However, some repressed, internal alarm deep in a newly born part of his subconscious did hear the footsteps that began to make their way up the stairs to the loft.

Hiccup was instantly and horribly awake. As the footsteps became louder, adrenaline began to flood his body, abusing tattered nerves and forcing every system into high alert. His stomach stopped its peaceful digestion and instead opted to clench, unclench, and twist like a tiny, hot serpent had lodged itself in there. A cold sweat exploded over the surface of his skin, and every muscle tensed in readiness for fight or flight.

It was then that Venka, Astrid and Toothless appeared over the stairs of the loft. Astrid, after half a second of taking in the sight of Hiccup's feeble but desperate attempt to launch himself up and out of bed, rushed to his side, Toothless in hot pursuit. The dragon began to whine worriedly, placing his front half on the bed and nudging his friend with his nose. The instant Hiccup felt Astrid's touch and determined her identity, he reared up and wrapped his arms around her waist, clinging to her as if she were a piece of driftwood in a turbulent sea. Astrid returned the embrace, though not as violently. He was shaking hard and his chest lurched as his heart beating hard enough that Astrid could feel it through the malnourished skin of his chest. Unsure what was wrong with him, Astrid reacted on instinct, nuzzling her nose against his ear and murmuring soothing nonsense while running her fingers through his hair, down his neck and across his shoulder blades. She let him feel her touch, smell her scent and hear her voice; she let him vanish into the security of her, hoping it would fix whatever had brought this on. Toothless pressed his head against Hiccup's back on the other side, reassuring him with his warmth and solid body.

Apparently, what she was doing had been the right thing. Hiccup's breathing began to grow easier as the adrenaline began to fizzle out. But when he lifted his head from her shoulder, Astrid noticed with dismay that he was crying. He kept himself pressed against her tightly as he began to wipe away the tears.

"Sorry," he said. The walls of his throat were trembling and jangling his vocal chords embarrassingly. "I'll stop in a second, I swear."

His breathing kept hitching, and Astrid merely crooned some more and pulled him back towards her breast. Hiccup didn't object, body quivering and tears still spilling. He did manage to flip himself onto his back so that he was facing Venka, still standing on the threshold of the room. He managed a smile a greeting that was marred by the tears shining on his face.

"You must be the healer," he guessed. "Astrid's been following all of your instructions like crazy, believe me."

"I've no doubt," Venka said confidently. She came to stand by the bed, using the edge of her smock to wipe away the sweat and tears on Hiccup's face. He thanked her, though it sounded more like another apology. Toothless licked his face, as if to ensure that it was fully clean, and an easy smile made its way to Hiccup's face.

"Be easy," the healer reassured them. "I know that was a scary feeling, but it's just an attack of nerves and it's perfectly normal in this case. What caused it Hiccup, do you know?"

Hiccup took a deep breath and let it out, finally feeling his body begin to calm down and his nerves begin to smooth out once more. "I heard footsteps," he mumbled, as if embarrassed.

Venka nodded understandingly. "And the sound brought back memories you'd care not to relive."

Hiccup felt Astrid grip him a little tighter, protectively. "That's about the size of it," he murmured. He averted his eyes away from the healer.

"Well, when you're ready, I just wanted to examine you and see how you're doing today. Are you feeling any better? You certainly look more alert than you did yesterday."

The talking was doing wonders for bringing Hiccup back to himself. "I feel more alert. Still tired and weak and everything hurts."

"I'm sure it does. This examination won't take too long, I promise. Then you can get back to resting."

"And being a useless lump?"

"Especially that."

After instructions from the healer to lay his head in Astrid's lap and scoot as far down the mattress as he could, Venka began to look at him. She started at his abdomen, pressing her ear there. Hiccup looked up at Astrid curiously, and Astrid merely smiled reassuringly at him.

"Sounds like your system is working busily again," Venka said, "Keep up this pace and you'll be putting on weight in no time. Now let's see about those kidneys…"

She kneaded along the area of his bladder and kidneys gently, and Hiccup couldn't suppress a wince. Venka quickly assured him that she wasn't surprised the area was still a little sore, and that in another day or so the pain should vanish. Hiccup sighed with relief, but then his muscles tensed when the healer said she needed to check on the infection.

"I'll be as quick and gentle as I can, love," Venka said softly. She moved between his legs and began to lift the blanket over his knees, obscuring her head from his view. As soon as Hiccup felt her fingers prodding his back passage, he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long, low whine. Toothless snuffled at his face and gave him a few tiny, frantic licks, while Astrid fumbled for his hand and held it.

Venka spoke up from the end of the bed. "Well, the infection is still draining, and it's still a little too inflamed, but at least it's no worse. I'll put more poultices on it and that should help."

Hiccup flinched as she applied the cool, slimy stuff to his rear. It felt reminiscent of…no, stop it. He couldn't think about that. He _wouldn't _think about that. He would stuff those memories down into the deepest, darkest abyss inside his soul that he could find. The only problem was that those memories were like a spring; he could crumple and flatten them with his will, but sooner or later he wouldn't be able to hold them down anymore, the tension would be released, and they would explode to the forefront of his mind without warning.

"Nothing more we can do now," Venka explained.

"_Nothing you can do now."_

"So just continue what we're doing?" Astrid asked.

"_We could just continue what we're doing until the sun rises. Hell, we could continue until the world breaks apart! Would you like that?"_

Venka nodded and stood up before saying, "Exactly. Just monitor his input and output. The color of his urine should lighten up in a couple days, and his bowels should start moving again. It's not unusual for trauma or extreme sickness to stop a person up. Our state of mind has more effect on our health than you'd think."

"_Hope your girl doesn't mind if I break you in a little for her…yes! That's it, make that noise again…"_

"Hiccup? Hiccup, are you alright?"

Even while she was asking the question, Astrid knew he wasn't alright. His eyes were unfocused, pupils dilating, and muscles tensing. His eyes suddenly widened into two perfectly round windows where fear was clearly visible in their depths. His lips began to form words, but Astrid couldn't hear them. She felt her chest tightened in panic, but luckily Venka's calm, collected voice cut through her panic smoothly.

"He's having a flashback," she said. She came up to stand by Hiccup's head. "I've seen it happen in many a Viking who's had a terrible experience in war. Sometimes people just blank out and relive a horrible moment involuntarily."

"What do I do?" Astrid asked helplessly. Toothless whined beside her desperately.

"Sometimes a familiar voice can bring a person back to themselves," Venka advised, "Just talk to him and touch him."

Astrid proceeded to do so, rubbing her fingers up and down Hiccup's temple and speaking as if she were coaxing a child out a bad dream, or a skittish animal out of a corner and into the light. It must have worked, because Hiccup's eyes focused and snapped up to meet Astrid's blue ones. To the girl's dismay, his eyes began to fill with tears.

"I'm sorry," he apologized shakily, "I was…somewhere I didn't want to be. But I never left. I'm safe now, I know that, so what's wrong with me?"

"Hush love," Venka said soothingly, placing her hand on his forearm, "You experienced a lot of trauma in these last four months. You aren't going to heal overnight, nor should you try and bully yourself into healing. Things like this take months or more commonly years to overcome. You may never overcome them and simply learn to live with them. But I promise you every day will get easier, and it will be easier for you especially because you are surrounded by so much love."

Astrid smiled bashfully and kept her eyes on Hiccup's, who flashed her a watery smile in return. Toothless gave his rider a loving lick, and Hiccup reached up a placed a clumsy arm on his head.

"I suppose I'll be on my way, then," Venka said as she stood up to leave. She collected her unused poultices and made her way towards the stairs.

"I'll walk you out," Astrid suggested, standing up from the bed and carefully placing Hiccup's head on his pillow. Toothless crawled onto the bed as best he could, practically burying his human in his solid warmth.

When the two women had made it down the stairs and to the main doors, Venka stopped and faced Astrid. She then reached into her pocket and pulled out a vial filled with a blue, syrupy liquid and handed it to the other girl, who took it hesitantly.

"It's a sedative," Venka explained solemnly, "His behavior today only proves how much he needs it. How much he _will_ need it." She sighed.

"What do you mean?" Astrid asked.

"These nerve attacks and flashbacks are only the vanguard, dear. You saw how you had to gentle him today like he was a spooked colt. When things like the nightmares start coming, it's only going to get worse before it gets better."

"But he hasn't"-

"No, not yet. His body is more concerned with catching up on sleep and figuring out that it can come out of survival mode right now. Once that happens…well, just keep that handy, will you love? Just a spoonful should do it, or two if he's really bad."

Astrid shuddered briefly, eyeing the vial and hating what it represented. "Thank you, Venka. We really appreciate everything you do."

The healer smiled kindly as she opened the door and let the cold, damp breeze in. "I know, love. Call on me any time you need me. I'll be back again tomorrow."

After bidding her goodbye, Astrid shut the door and leaned against it. Her legs felt weak, and worst of all, her chest wouldn't stop hitching.


	5. Oh Sweet Poison

The first full week of Hiccup's recovery was undoubtedly the longest, most nerve wracking, tear-filled and exhausting period of time for patient, support system, and healer. However, it was also the most rewarding experience of Astrid's life since she had trained her dragon. The carefully planned meals, hours of good sleep, and medicine had done wonders of turning the gaunt, pale wisp Hiccup had been into the ray of liquid sunshine he had become. Granted, he was still too thin and tired easily, but there was an extra twenty pounds of him that hadn't been there before, and to Astrid, that was the progress she had been hoping for, especially since Venka had concluded that in just four months Hiccup had lost almost a third of his body weight.

Astrid also couldn't get over how his skin had gone from being white to being flushed and almost golden in tone, and has hair (why yes, she was quite aware she had an obsession with it) had become glossy and silky once again. She never failed to show her appreciation for this fact by running her fingers flirtatiously through it, an action that always brought an adorable blush to his face. And of course, it made the most feminine part of her feminine core melt with delight whenever he smiled now, especially the big toothy ones that reached his eyes. They were especially beautiful whenever the sun came in through the window above his bed and a warm beam would shine down on him like a spotlight. Sometimes, if the sun caressed his face just right, it would light up his eyes and bring forth the little golden flecks she knew were hidden in their green depths.

This happened one evening after they had finished dinner, and Astrid found herself wanting to cry in ecstasy at the sight: Hiccup, lying next to her on the bed, all lit up and warm and content, the infection that had almost killed him when he first came home now a scabbed over wound that only bothered him if he moved wrong. His glorious smile, the way he buried his forehead against hers in glee as he laughed at something she said, the sun-warmed scent that filled her senses; it was like he was a god delivered to her by the sun, except so much more sacred than that, because she had come a hair's breath away from losing him forever. And this is why she treasured every precious blush, every tease, every physical way he showed her he loved her and missed her with fiber of his young heart. And her feminine core soaked it all in and drowned in it happily.

Speaking of her feminine core…

They had kissed many times since Hiccup had returned, mostly just quick pecks that were meant to be comforting or affectionate when the time seemed appropriate. That was how this kiss initiated by Hiccup started out; affectionate and warm with a hand against her cheek and one of her hands on his shoulders as she happily reciprocated. Yet, something almost visceral began to stir in Hiccup that he felt compelled to respond to. It was a sensuous creature that moved fluidly between his ribs before it giggled impishly and sent blood flushing with ferocity between his thighs. Shivering in response, Hiccup's kiss began to grow more animated, tongue pushing gently past Astrid's lips to explore what he had missed since his capture.

Holy gods, _had he missed her_.

Hiccup rolled onto his back, pulling Astrid with him. She didn't miss a beat, breaking only for a moment for breath, before climbing on top of him fully, straddling his waist. She could feel every rapid breath of his rising and falling diaphragm between her legs, touching the most sensitive area of her body and sending blood flushing to her sex in response. She laid her hands on both sides of his face while his hands gripped her shoulders. Her hands slipped down his face, down his neck, and came to rest on his bare chest. She broke away from his lips to kiss his neck, admittedly her favorite place to kiss on his body. She had as much of an obsession it with it as she did his hair, and why not? The skin on his neck was so soft, so sensitive, and his scent of fresh air and pine forests collected heavily here. Clearly, it was Hiccup's favorite place for her to kiss as well. When her tongue began laving the tendons there, Hiccup's eyes closed and his breath left him in a rush. With a low, needy moan, he arched his neck towards her for more of her attentions, pulling her closer while arching his back.

"I missed you," Astrid breathed against his skin, "Oh gods, Hiccup, you're so beautiful, so special. _I love you_."

She said it with such a sense of worship that Hiccup panted a little faster and tipped his head back, exposing his vulnerable, creamy throat for Astrid to do what she would. She kissed up his throat, pausing to lick his Adam's apple, and nuzzling the junction where his neck connected to his jaw. She felt another moan vibrate in his throat, and could imagine Hiccup's brows slanting just the slightest bit upward in his desperate elation.

"A-Astrid…" he begged.

Astrid planted a few tender kisses along his cheeks, his forehead, and his chin, before looking him straight in the eye. Hiccup's face was flushed as well as his neck, lips parted to let his rapid breaths in and out, and his hair was tousled pleasantly. Astrid grinned deviously.

"Yes?" she answered, "I'm listening."

Hiccup made a noise that was half moan, half whine, before sitting up and pulling her head to his in a sloppy kiss that was as much filled with the release of tension as it was heady want. He pulled the blanket off of himself (unfortunately for her, he had been given his pants back after he felt he could wear them without being in too much pain), slid his hands down her chest, coming to rest on her breasts. Astrid jumped at the unexpected touch, but gasped a moment later and pushed her chest further into his grip. When his hands began to move, she lost it, groaning into their kiss. She then leaned down to kiss and nip along his collarbone, simultaneously becoming aware of a new sensation.

Astrid was in Hiccup's lap now. And his desire was quite prominently pushing against her sensitive sex.

Feeling the evidence of his maleness, his want for her, so solidly, how could Astrid not want to push Hiccup and see how far she could go with it? So, she bore down on the bulge, rocking back and forth against it, tipping her head back in bliss.

Hiccup, for his part, was seeing stars. The sublime glory of the pleasure she was gifting him with shot from his heart to his legs with the force of a hurricane. His blood was _boiling_, rushing and roaring in his veins like a river in a flood. He gave a helpless cry, body shaking.

"Astrid!" he gasped.

"Ohhh," she said breathily, quite lost in her own pleasure. "Tell me what you want, babe."

"I want…I-I…" But Hiccup didn't know what he wanted; only that he wanted it _now._ He rocked against her harder, eyes unfocused, sweat dampening his bangs.

So Astrid reached between his legs and began to rub him hard, using the heel of her hand to dig in. She also managed to rest her head on his shoulder, nipping at his ear lobe while rubbing her body subtly against his, like a jealous animal marking her mate with her scent to keep other rivals away. Astrid hated to admit it, but she was quite possessive by nature, and this tendency extended reasonably to the most precious person in her life. If another woman so much as batted an eyelash in a way that suggested she thought Hiccup was attractive in a platonic sense, Astrid would have been all over her with her axe like flies on yak pies. Surprisingly, Hiccup didn't mind; perhaps because he was so devoted to her. If anything, he was flattered by her possessiveness, and though he'd never tell her out loud, he found it kind of sexy.

"What you do to me," Astrid groaned in response to another high pitched moan from Hiccup, "You kill me, you know that right?"

Hiccup buried his face into her shoulder, breathing harshly. A shudder ran from the top of his head all the way down his frame.

"_What you do to me. You slay me, you know."_

"_Just give their punishment to me. They're only twelve, please spare"-_

With a harsh, guttural gasp, Hiccup began to push Astrid off his lap.

"Stop!" he cried out, "Please Astrid, stop please! I can't…"

Astrid was immediately snapped harshly out of her daze, all but throwing herself off his lap and off the bed altogether. She could only stare at him as he continued to beg, "Stop…I can't do this, please…" However, by the vacant, haunted way he was staring at the wall across the room, and from the way he began to rock himself back and forth, she was pretty sure he wasn't talking to her anymore.

And to her horror, Hiccup's eyes began to fill with tears.

"Oh gods," he gasped, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes, "Stop! Why do I have to do this? I'm safe now, so stop crying. Stop crying, stop crying, stop crying…"

Astrid could only watch helplessly, unsure of what she should do. She was afraid to touch him since it was so obvious that her touch had caused him distress. Luckily, Hiccup solved her plight when he turned towards her, arms reaching in her direction and whimpering her name pitifully. With a sympathetic "Oh sweetheart," she answered his plea and sat down on the bed beside him, pulling him into her arms. He wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked his head under her chin, crumpling like paper being consumed by flames. Astrid rocked with him, trailing her fingers across his face and down his side. The only words that would come out of his mouth were "I'm sorry," over and over, the only words that he could find to voice the guilt churning in his body cavity.

"Oh hush," Astrid admonished him, "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"Yes I do!" Hiccup insisted. Astrid could feel his chest begin to expand and contract rapidly, and he began to tremble. "It's been a week already! What's wrong with me, why aren't I better? I hate myself for this."

A sob clogged his throat and jerked his chest, and Astrid felt a rush of hot tears on her chest. Ironically, the fact that he was still crying seemed to distress Hiccup even more, because he let out a frustrated groan in the wake of his continuing tears.

"Damn it, stop crying!" he commanded himself. He brought up his hands again to dig into his eyes in hopes of stemming the flow of his tears, and Astrid caught his wrists.

"Enough," she said gently. Hiccup's breathing began to grow more erratic, and that was when Astrid reached for the blue bottle on the table containing the sedative Venka had left for her as well as a small spoon. She measured out a spoonful of the sedative, and murmured a request for Hiccup to take it. He balked at first, having taken the sedative once already and hating the loss of control over his own body that came with it; a deep, forced relaxation would wash over him quickly followed by thick, dreamless sleep. But then he realized that he didn't have the energy or the desire to deal with the millions of emotions rocking through his body, and would rather have the dreamless sleep so that he could reset himself. So, reluctantly, he accepted the spoonful, shivering as the strangely flavored syrup slid down his throat.

"Remember what Venka said?" Astrid said once he settled back in her arms, "You can't bully yourself into getting better. You'll recover in your own time and not before. You'd think you would have learned this when you lost your leg."

Hiccup couldn't find it within himself to be annoyed with her about this observation. The sedative was already soothing his nerves and turning his organs into a single mass of liquid, tingling warmth. His heart was being lulled from its war drum-like hammering into a sleepier cadence. "I know, but that was different. There was just the physical problem when I lost my leg and not all this…other stuff."

Astrid sighed. "I get it. And you just want things to go back to the way they were."

Hiccup nuzzled his nose into her neck drowsily. "Yeah. And I'm frustrated by how…afraid I am all the time…I'm so _tired_ of being afraid, of hurting, of being weak..."

"You'll get better," she assured him, "because you'll slow down and take the time to get better."

"I really am sorry though… about pushing you off. I started it, and you wanted it"-

"Hiccup"-

"But I wanted it too! And that's part of what's frustat-…fust-…fr"-

Astrid shushed him. His eyes were slipping closed and his body was turning into a dead weight against her chest. She laid Hiccup down amongst the furs, maintaining a hold on his hand and kneeling on the floor next to bed.

"Be patient," she said quietly, "We'll get there when you're ready."

"But…m'sorry…not fair t'you…"

With a tender smile, Astrid reached up and brushed Hiccup's bangs away from his forehead, "Listen babe, if from now until we die all I get to do is hold your hand, I'll be the happiest girl in Berk."

Hiccup sighed, smiled slightly, and mumbled almost as an afterthought, "My stomach hurts."

"Then let the sedative do its job. You'll feel better when you wake up. Shh…there you go, that's it, just rest…just rest…"

And as the heavy, unnatural blackness flooded through his brain, Hiccup's last solid thought was that, when he woke up, he needed to start telling Astrid about the events that occurred over the last four months, especially the ones that had left him with this poisonous fear of footsteps and being kissed by the person who meant more to him than his own heart beating languidly in his chest.


	6. In the Chill of Moonlight

Toothless was jolted from a deep sleep at the darkest, quietest point of the night. He blinked his eyes dazedly and rubbed at his nose, wondering what could have woken him. He was laying downstairs like a great, scaly guard-dog. He had wanted to make sure that if anything was going to attempt to harm the two fragile lives upstairs, they would have to get past him first. However, it was dead quiet in the house and outside. Even the crickets had gone to bed. The only sound Toothless could hear was the ringing silence and the beating of his own heart. So, if a sound hadn't woken him, what had it been? He rubbed at his nose again, feeling like ants were crawling in the delicate lining.

Wait a minute. That was what had woken him! That prickly sensation in his nose caused by a strong smell! Toothless took a few deep breaths, sniffing the air, and there it was, smacking him in the face with the force of a Gronckle: that scent that had made his insides clench with what it meant.

The scent of fear.

And it was coming from the loft.

Now wide awake and without another thought, Toothless scurried up the stairs that led to the loft and trotted over to the bed where Hiccup and Astrid had lain down to sleep earlier and where they lay still. Astrid was still out cold, so the fear-scent wasn't coming from her. The scrawny body that lay curled up next to her on the other hand was whimpering and twitching wretchedly.

Toothless watched helplessly for a few moments as a myriad of emotions played across Hiccup's face. His features pinched into many varieties of fear, sadness, and anger, eyebrows rising and falling, lips working, head trying to bury itself further into the pillow as if trying to escape the images pounding in his subconscious mind. His eyes flickered under his lids, as if literally looking for solace in his sleep, a hero in his dark dream when there obviously wasn't one.

Toothless knew his rider was always the hero, the one saving others. Now it was time for someone to save him.

The dragon pushed his nose against Hiccup's head, crooning plaintively for his rider to _wake up, please wake up, stop being so afraid, I can't take it!_ He then pushed his head under Hiccup's shoulders, beginning to lift him into a sitting position, and it was from this motion that Hiccup woke with a choked gasp. The gasp sent saliva down his windpipe, which in turn sent him into a coughing fit. It was this sound that woke Astrid, and she sat up slowly beside him.

"Another nightmare?" she asked groggily, but not without concern.

Hiccup simply shuddered in shame and threw himself face first onto his pillow with a weak, frustrated groan. Astrid noticed that his ribs were heaving in the aftermath of his nightmare, and she could see the sheen of sweat coating the back of his neck in the moonlight. With a tired sigh, she began massaging the back of his neck, noting that the muscles there were as hard as stone.

Slowly, the pressure of the massage and the flood of pleasure chemicals that were released as a result began to override the adrenaline lingering in his veins. Once his breathing had calmed, Hiccup gave a shuddering sigh and flipped onto his back, looking her in the eye. Astrid sighed again with utter sympathy. There were the beginnings of dark circles under his eyes that spoke of days without a full night of sleep. In fact, the last full night of sleep he had received had been when he had taken Venka's sedative after he and Astrid had tried to be intimate. But Venka had insisted that they be careful in how much they gave him. One of her main ingredients in it was poppy oil, and the stuff was highly addictive.

Gods, Hiccup looked so _exhausted_. There seemed to be a plea in his glazed, green eyes when they stared up at her, a plea to make the nightmares stop, _please I'm so tired, I've suffered enough, I just want to sleep.._

But she had known these nightmares would be coming. And what was worse, she didn't know _how_ to make them stop.

"Sedative?" Hiccup asked tentatively. He placed a beseeching hand on top of hers.

The way he said it almost made Astrid want to say damn it all and give him a dose; anything to bring him some relief. But she hardened her heart and caressed his cheek.

"You know you can't have any more tonight," she said softly, regretfully.

Hiccup licked his lips and swallowed, hard and audibly. "I know. But it was worth a shot."

They lay there in uncomfortable silence for a few moments, allowing the only sounds to pass between be the beating of their hearts and the sound of Toothless' concerned whuffling.

Finally, Hiccup spoke up, curling his fingers more tightly around Astrid's. "It might help if I…if I told you some of what happened while I was gone."

"While you were gone'?" Astrid paraphrased, "You make it sound like you were on vacation."

The corners of Hiccup's lips quirked up and it warmed Astrid's heart to see it. "Oh yeah, there was sun, seas, far off countries, barbaric pirates and equally barbaric civilians. I had a nice tan for a while though."

"Maybe it's better that you lost that tan, otherwise you would have looked like one of those Romans."

Hiccup's shoulders tensed and Astrid could see the tendons in his neck stand out slightly. The lump in his throat bobbed as he swallowed again.

"I need to tell you," he whispered, "I wanted to tell you days ago, but I was too afraid."

"Understandably," Astrid assured him.

"It was like, if I didn't talk about it, then I could pretend it didn't really happen," Hiccup continued, "I could just leave it all on the sea. If I brought it home…then that means it happened. It's part of me now. The fear, the pain, it's as much a part of me as my skin is, or the fact that I have crooked teeth"-

"Your teeth are fine, idiot."

"You know what I mean."

"I do." Astrid moved closer to him, placing a hand on the back of his head and bringing his head closer to hers until their foreheads touched. "I want you to tell me. I want to share this burden with you when it's clear you can't handle it on your own."

"What do you mean"-

"Shut up. It's the truth and you know it."

Astrid smirked affectionately and kissed him on the nose. He snorted and wrinkled his nose playfully.

"Just tell me what you can tonight, and we'll see where we are," Astrid said, compromising. Toothless murmured his agreement, laying his head on his boy's hip.

Hiccup nodded, and took a deep, calming breath.

000

"Search him. Take any weapons or armor he has."

The crew of the pirate ship did not hesitate to follow their captain's orders. Two men piece by piece relieved Hiccup of his sword, a few hidden daggers, and all of his leather armor. Soon enough, he was left standing on the deck in only his green tunic and brown pants, feeling utterly vulnerable and exposed before so many enemies. Yet, he knew that if he turned around, the Viking ship they had taken him from would still be visible behind them. His father and Astrid would still be able to see him, perhaps not really, but in his heart he allowed himself to believe it, and it gave him the strength to keep his head held high and to stop his frightened tears from falling anymore.

The pirate captain approached Hiccup, looking him up and "hmm"-ing to himself. Hiccup was reminded of the way some people looked over a prized horse before they bought it, and he shifted uncomfortably.

"Alright Northlander, all you need to do is show some respect and everyone will get along just fine on this ship," the pirate captain explained as he paced back and forth in front of Hiccup.

"I don't exactly respect those who attack my people and bind my hands tight enough to cut off the circulation ," Hiccup replied, lifting his bound hands for emphasis.

The pirate captain waved his hand dismissively. "That's no matter. You'll just have to _learn _respect. The others have."

"What others?"

"The ones you'll enjoy the trip with."

"Where are you taking me?"

The captain laughed. "Where we take all the other people we sell as slaves. Three guesses and the first two don't count."

"But"-

"Whoops, too late. Put him down the hatch."

Hiccup was shuffled along by another pirate until they reached a trap door near the back of the ship. The pirate opened it, lifting the hatch with an ominous creak that sounded like a scream. Hiccup leaned forward cautiously, but only saw blackness below him.

"I wouldn' look for allies down there," the pirate warned Hiccup with a nasty smile, "They're more likely to eat'cha rather than help ya."

"What?" Hiccup's eyes widened into two green saucers.

The pirate pushed him down the hole without missing a beat.

"See ya for the next feedin' time!" he called after Hiccup's surprised cry, "Then again, maybe I won'!"

And the door was slammed shut, without so much as a prayer or a wish-you-well.

Hiccup hit the wooden floor sooner than he thought he would, the force knocking the breath from his body and stunning his muscles into temporary immobility. When he opened his eyes, he noticed the only light came from a single porthole near the back of the chamber. The floor itself was covered in straw, and the air was musty and sharp. Hiccup wrinkled his nose and rolled over with a pained groan.

When he sat up, he came face to face with a man who was looking at him the way a predator stares down an intruder. Hiccup started backwards with a gasp, scrambling on his hands and feet in a crab crawl. When the wall finally stopped him, Hiccup noticed that he was sitting beside the lone porthole. As he caught his breath, at least a dozen more sets of eyes lit up in the darkness, and all of them were fixed on him. As Hiccup became accustomed to the darkness, he was able to perceive that all of the bound prisoners were women, and that the youngest were just children.

The man Hiccup had almost bumped foreheads with before was still staring at him, and Hiccup watched as his eyes flickered over him, taking in his appearance. He snarled a moment later, teeth bared slightly and a growl rumbling in his chest. He pulled himself up as tall as he could go with the low ceiling above them, managing to get partway to his feet. He then lunged at Hiccup before he forced him onto his back, planted a foot on Hiccup's belly and held him down. Hiccup, too stunned to fight back, squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face away, preparing for the disembowelment and hoping it would be fast.

When nothing happened, Hiccup chanced a peek, flicking his gaze nervously to see the man still towering over him, but not disemboweling him. His eyes bore into Hiccup's, teeth still bared.

"Eðelstæf áflíegung*," he whispered intensely, grinding his foot harder against Hiccup's vulnerable belly. Hiccup flinched as a soft cry was squeezed from him. The man spat one more word at him, and from the tone, Hiccup knew it was meant to be an insult."Mægþegesa."

He let Hiccup up a moment later, retreating back to his people. Hiccup could only shiver and stare at the wooden floor of the ship, not even having the heart to push himself up further than onto his elbows. The man had shown him through a display of dominance that, while he certainly wouldn't eat him, Hiccup wasn't welcome down there.

_Stay away, Viking_. That was what he had said. And it was quite obvious that Hiccup was a Viking; he was tall, pale, had braids in his hair, and if he didn't smell like fish he would be shocked. The man was from a large set of islands called Briton, based on the dialect he spoke, and Hiccup knew for a fact that the Vikings and the people of Briton held a special grudge against each other. Though the Vikings of Berk hadn't personally been on the island, there were other Vikings from Denmark that had pretty much tried to raze Briton to the ground and almost succeeded. It was no wonder the man saw him as a threat.

The man was sitting amongst his people and speaking lowly to them. Hiccup could only barely catch what he was saying, but he definitely heard the words "stay away" again and saw the man nod towards him. He was looking in particular at a set of young girls that couldn't have been older than twelve. The man hugged them towards him in what looked like a protective embrace as the girls gazed at Hiccup with wide eyes filled with trepidation.

Oh gods, did the man actually think that Hiccup would…? The thought made him sick. The man honestly thought that Hiccup would assault the girls if he turned his back. Well, he supposed it made sense, given his age and the reputation his people must have garnered in Briton. Then again, he looked down at his spindly arms and legs, which had gained some muscle mass over the years, but knew that he still couldn't assault a lima bean and win much less a person. His brain was still the strongest part of him, at least in his opinion.

Astrid always said it was his heart.

Oh Astrid…Hiccup curled up into a fetal position and leaned his head against the wall so that he could look outside the porthole. Her tearful face and desperate, angry pleas jumped into his mind, and he pushed the images aside. He couldn't afford to think about her now. His poor heart wouldn't be able to take the abuse.

The trapdoor opened again hours later and a voice rang out above them, "Dinner is served, savages!"

A load of fish and bread was dumped down the trap door, landing in a pile on the wooden floor with several sloppy and dull thumps. Everyone came forward to grab their share and retreated into the shadows without a word. When the man grabbed his, Hiccup deemed it safe enough to shuffle on his hands and knees until he reached a small but juicy looking tuna. He took it in his hands and prepared to retreat again to a safe distance, but suddenly the fish was snatched from his grip by the man, who was glaring down at him and growling, as if daring Hiccup to try and take the fish back. Hiccup bowed under the man's threatening gaze, turning his head and baring his neck, everything about his submissive posture screaming, _I'm just small and frightened, I mean you no harm, please don't hurt me._ However, it was only after he had retreated back to his place by the porthole that the man broke his stare with him and turned back to his people.

_Does he really need to be so greedy?_ Hiccup thought with a huff, _He already had his share_.

Then Hiccup saw the man hand the tuna to two young girls sitting next to him. The girls were so alike in face to him that Hiccup could only assume they were his daughters, and he watched as the girls split the tuna between them and began to eat.

Hiccup sighed and let his head 'thunk' against the wall again. This was going to be a long trip to…wherever it was they were going if he wasn't allowed near the food pile the whole way.

Later that night, long after the moon had risen and the others had fallen asleep, one of the young girls was awoken by a strange sound.

Well, the sound wasn't strange in the normal sense; it was strange in that she had never heard its like in this prison chamber since she had arrived here weeks ago.

Someone was singing.

Lifting her head slowly noiselessly, she peered over the body of her sister, who was lying next to her, and followed the sound, finding that her eyes had come to rest on the young Viking her father had warned her about.

"Remember what they did to our neighbors' women?" he had said, "He'll do the same to ours if he gets the chance. Stay away from him. Don't let him near the food if you can help it. The weaker he gets, the less we'll have to worry. The world will be better off if there's one less Viking in it."

The girl knew he was right. She had seen the aftermath of many Viking raids, and many of the dead Vikings were around this boy's age, some younger. But they still killed with the same ferocity as those Vikings that were her father's age.

Still, it couldn't hurt to at least listen to what he was singing. In the quiet of the chamber, it wasn't like she had much choice anyway.

"_Dovakhiin, dovakhiin, naal ok zin los vahriin.**_

_Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal!"_

Well, it certainly wasn't in her tongue, and when she really concentrated, she didn't think it was in Norse either. Norse usually sounded so clipped, and even guttural sometimes, and this language sounded much older. The boy had his eyes closed, head swaying and one finger tapping out the rhythm on his knee, both of which were pulled up to his chest.

"_Arhk fin norok paal graan fod nust hon zindro zaan."_

It must have been the way the moonlight caressed his face, or the soft lilting of his voice (which was a nice tenor, not at all the voice she expected to come out of him), or the worshipful way the words left his lips, as if the song meant a lot to him. She didn't know how he was doing it, but the Viking was turning himself into something that didn't look like a Viking anymore.

He was looking like a frightened boy singing to comfort himself.

"_Dovakhiin, fah hin, kogaan mu draal."_

The Viking trailed off, looking lost suddenly, as if he wished that the song was longer so that the silence wouldn't return so quickly. The girl found herself wishing for that too. He opened his eyes, and in the moonlight she noticed that they were a warm, bright shade of green, and were rather large on his face.

He was rather pretty, overall. A pretty young man with a boyish face and a very un-Viking like voice. Huh.

A high, plaintive, gurgling sound piped up through the silence, and the Viking wrapped an arm around his middle, face pinching as though he were in pain. The girl remembered the tuna her father had taken away from him before, and she inexplicably felt guilty for eating it. She wondered if he was also awake because his empty stomach wouldn't let him sleep. The girl knew that feeling well enough.

The girl put her head back down and began to fall asleep again, but not before hearing the boy's belly complain again, followed by the sounds of harsh breaths and quiet sobs.

"Mamma…" he whispered, "Mamma…"

**A/N: *The language the man from Briton is speaking is Old English. These people on the ship are Anglo-Saxon, and the Anglo-Saxons indeed have a bloody history with Vikings. In fact, the Vikings almost wiped the language of English out of history because they took over so much of the country of present day Britain. **

****The song is "Song of the Dragonborn." The song speaks of a hero born of dragons who speaks to them using the Nordic language. It seemed appropriate as perhaps a song Hiccup's mother might have sung to him when he was younger and a song he holds close to his heart, and that's why he calls for her at the end. Turns out the word "mamma" means the same in both Norwegian and English. **

**I'm going a bit off the logic of the books that showed Hiccup knew a lot of languages. It makes sense with his curiosity and the fact that he's a pretty smart cookie that he would take the time to learn other languages.**


	7. There's a Sense the Fire Burns

It was like this for several days. Every day Hiccup would try to grab something from the food pile, and every instance he was thwarted by the huge Anglo-Saxon man whose name he learned was Aethel. The word meant "prince" and was quite a common name, so he figured it was appropriate. And he certainly acted like a prince. He saw to the needs of his people first, always ensuring that they got their share of the food before he took his, always giving them faith and helping to lighten their spirits by telling stories or singing songs. Hiccup admired his leadership skills and how seriously he took his role.

But several days is a long time to go without food, and Hiccup could feel the effects not just in his suffering stomach, but in the weakness in his limbs as well. It became too much of an effort to sit up without the support of the wall of the cell, and soon it became too much of an effort to sit up an all. His body would try to conserve his dwindling supply of energy, and as a result he found himself asleep more often than awake. What was truly scary was that sometimes he would jerk awake without remembering falling asleep at all. Hiccup found himself looming in and out of dreams; some were happy and simple, full of flight through the clouds and sunshine on his face. Sometimes he would dream he was back home and those were the worst because those were the ones he never wanted to wake up from.

But, every night, when he was sure everyone was asleep, Hiccup could sing to the stars in the sky and imagine that his people were looking up the same stars and worrying about him. He could pretend, just for the duration of his song, that he was with Astrid at the Great Hall, or on the fjord, and that she was singing along with him about mead, or the seasons, or love, or some heroic tale they knew by heart. Weak as he was, he found his mind beginning to unravel slightly as well, and he found himself feeling the heat of the fires against his skin, smelling Astrid's scent, or tasting mist on his tongue. And when his song was over, he could open his eyes and cry in the quiet when the warm fires of the Hall died away, the fjords dissipated into the mist, and Astrid's singing voice and warmth against his shoulder would fall into the abyss.

He was cold, frightened, and utterly alone for the first time in his life.

Except, of course, for the silent observer on the other side of the cell.

Aelfgifu, in all of her twelve years of life, had never encountered someone so fascinating. The boy was a Viking, but he was submissive towards her father's authority and never looked for a fight. The looks he gave the women in her group were curious and even wistful at times, not lustful. She found there was something in his face she liked, something earthy and gentle and welcoming to friends and even to enemies.

Yet, it was his singing that really caught her interest. Lately, she had been lying awake at night on purpose hoping to hear him. It wasn't his voice so much that she thought was great (though it wasn't bad, it was quite a nice, natural singing voice) but the way he sang. Aelfgifu couldn't understand the words to his songs since many of them tended to be in Norse, but the passion with which he sang them tugged at her heart. His face would shift through different emotions as he sang, and Aelfgifu realized that she didn't need to understand the words to understand how sacred the songs were. The Viking's eyes would glaze as he stared out the porthole, and that would be the moment she would see his soul fly out the window.

And Aelfgifu understood.

He wasn't going to hurt them. He was just lonely and afraid and missing home like she was, and Aelfgifu knew what it was like to miss home so badly it hurt, but at least she had her family with her. The Viking had no one, and she couldn't fathom the despair that must go along with that. And that was how she got up the courage to speak to him one night.

Aelfgifu lay very still and feigned sleep until she was certain everyone had drifted off. When their heavy breathing told her they had, still she waited. She wouldn't make a move until she heard-

"_Päällä talvisen maan hetki kuin ikuisuus._

_Mi pienen kissan jakoin luokseni hiipii."_

There; confirmation he was awake. And he was singing a song she had heard him sing many times before. It was soft and wistful but intense, and so melancholy in tone that the curiosity as to what the words meant was killing her.

"_Tääl tarinain lähteellä asua saan mis."_

Quiet as she could manage, the tiny Anglo-Saxon girl sat up and crept over to where the Viking sat gazing intently out the window. Aelfgifu stopped when she was just a couple feet away, wary. But apparently the Viking was too listless or too lost in his own world to notice that she was there, and kept going until she was close enough to see the faint stubble growing on his jaw. She took a deep breath. No turning back now.

"_Laulullaan herättää maan…"_

"H-Hello."

The Viking boy jumped nearly to the ceiling and his surprised eyes flickered to meet hers. Goodness, they were even greener and brighter up close. Aelfgifu smiled nervously, and his expression of surprise didn't change. Suddenly, Aelfgifu wanted to smack herself; he wouldn't be able to understand anything she said and she didn't understand a lick of Norse. This was going to be harder than-

"Hello."

Wait. He just answered her in her own tongue, and he was smiling a greeting at her that was so genuine that she couldn't help but return it.

"You know my language?" she asked, amazed.

He nodded, and then fluttered his hand in a see-saw motion which she took to mean "a bit."

"I am mangling Anglo-Saxon bad," he said. She giggled.

"It's alright," Aelfgifu assured him. "I am Aelfgifu, and I am very sorry for the way my father has been treating you. It's his way of protecting us."

The Viking answered, "I am Hiccup, and I no pass bad judgment on father your. It is his task as leader."

"Hiccup," she repeated. The name tasted pleasant on her tongue, and she felt this was fitting for the image she had developed of him. "Nevertheless, I have brought you this. I hid them under my clothes all day to keep them from my family because I felt you needed them badly."

Aelfgifu watched his eyes widen in amazement as she pulled out two loaves of bread and the tail-end of a large fish from inside the neck of her shirt. During everyone one of the meals they had been served today, she had grabbed her own ration as well as secretly taking an extra ration for the young Viking. If she had learned anything from living with the semi-feral dogs in her village, it was when you wanted to make friends with one, you should feed it first.

Especially if it was clearly starving.

She placed the bread and fish into his lap, and when he only glanced up at her and then back to the food in his lap, she gently reassured him that he could eat it. She even turned her body slightly away from his and averted her gaze so that he wouldn't feel so intimidated, as if she might suddenly snatch it back. Aelfgifu heard his stomach growl loudly, as if it too was pleading with him to eat and ease the pain and weakness that had been his constant companions as of late.

A moment later, Aelfgifu turned her head back towards him to see him bolting down the loaves of bread, barely bothering to chew. The fish was the last to go, and he peeled every single bit of raw flesh off the bones, so hungry that the slimy texture of the meat sliding down his throat didn't bother him. When he was finished, he licked his fingertips, making sure not a crumb or a drop of fish-juice was missed. Aelfgifu looked away respectfully, suddenly feeling an overwhelming sense of pity.

With a sigh, Hiccup said, "Thank you," and Aelfgifu could hear the smile in his voice before she looked at him again and saw it gracing his lips. A tenseness in his face she hadn't even noticed before eased and his cloudy eyes cleared, the food giving him new strength and relaxing his rigid body.

"Happy you help me," Hiccup's smile dropped a little. "But why? Father say to stay away."

Surprisingly, Aelfgifu had an immediate answer for this. She grinned and said demurely, "There was something I liked about your face."

"My face?"

"Yes. You have… a kind face. An expressive face. I could see what you were feeling easily by looking at it. I didn't see any anger there, so I knew that my father was wrong and you wouldn't hurt us."

He didn't seem to know how to reply, mouth gaping like a fish's and looking down at his hands in his lap, so Aelfgifu added, "Plus, I liked listening to your songs."

Hiccup flushed noticeably, even in the low light. Aelfgifu had to bite back a chuckle as the bright color traveled from his cheeks, over his ears and down his neck.

"Thank you," he mumbled. "No one was to hear them on purpose…"

"What do you sing about?"

Hiccup's expression softened and brightened. "Things of the home. Food, drink, snow, music, love, and stories."

"What about the song you sang tonight? You've sung it several times. Is it one of your favorites?"

"Yes, favorite of slow songs. It is about the snow and being in the state of child. Song says snow is like kitten with soft paws. There is much snow in my home, but true this only sometimes…"

The two of them talked long into the night, about the meaning of all of the songs Hiccup had sung on the ship, about how Aelfgifu had songs from her home that were of similar content. He told her about Berk, babbling on and on without giving her a chance to speak, though not on purpose. Aelfgifu understood; he had been missing his home so terribly and had no one to speak with about his sorrow, so all of the love and pride he held for it bubbled to the surface and gushed like a geyser. Aelfgifu listened to him, entranced, especially when he spoke of the dragons and his role in training them.

"Perhaps the Welsh and Scottish dragons could be trained," she observed. Hiccup agreed, seeing no reason why they couldn't be.

They stopped speaking only when Aelfgifu noticed a line of pink hovering on the horizon.

"I will be back again tomorrow night," she assured him, already moving back towards the sleeping bodies of her family, "Do not worry about food anymore. I will take care of you. In exchange, you must tell me more about Berk and the dragons. And perhaps you could teach me some Norse?"

Hiccup pretended to think hard, tapping his chin for emphasis. "You propose difficult bargain. But I think I could do this."

He grinned crookedly, something he had been quite lot during their conversation. Aelfgifu giggled, finding she liked that grin. It made him look less like the fearsome enemy painted in her mind and more like…well, a real person.

"Goodnight," she whispered.

Hiccup shook his head. "Uh uh. Goodnight is 'godnatt.'"

Aelfgifu smiled widely. "Godnatt, then, Hiccup."

And this was how it went for many days. Aelfgifu would meet Hiccup at night, and after he had eaten his rations, the stories would flow from him. Of course, at some point, Astrid came up in their conversation, and Aelfgifu's eyes went wide with adoration at his description of the blond Viking.

"Amazing!" she exclaimed, "She really fights with an axe? Alongside the men of Berk?"

Hiccup nodded proudly. "One of best fighters in Northlands. Could kill many Romans easy on own! All while to be beautiful as…as… the sunrise."

He blushed after he said that, and his eyes seemed to glaze over. Aelfgifu prodded his elbow gently.

"You're in love with her?" she asked.

Hiccup nodded, sighing, "Yes. Was going to ask to…to…" He trailed off, unsure of the correct word in Anglo-Saxon. However, Aelfgifu, able to read how devoted he was to this girl in his face, guessed easily enough what his intentions were, supplied the word for him.

"Her to marry you?"

"Yes! Marry. But…well, cannot now." He glanced around their cell and shrugged.

Aelfgifu set her face and narrowed her eyes determinedly. "You will see her again! She loves you and she wants to marry you too, so that means you'll make it back. And I wouldn't keep her waiting, otherwise she'll cleave you with that axe!"

Hiccup couldn't have kept back the burst of laughter back if he tried. Aelfgifu shushed him loudly, glancing back at her family to make sure they were still asleep. When she saw they were, she joined in the laughter, more quietly of course.

"I think I'd like her if I met her," she said.

"You would."

Even when they parted for the evening, Hiccup couldn't get what Aelfgifu had said out of his mind. She was right; Astrid was waiting for him, and the longer he sat here on this boat, the further away from home he was being carried. The food Aelfgifu had been bringing him had been giving him strength, enough strength to aid him in a possible escape. And though she didn't know it, she had given him something far more valuable.

To him, it was "håp." To her it was "hopa." To the rest of the world, it was "hope." And it was something that nobody would be able to take away from him ever again.

Long after the Anglo-Saxon girl had fallen asleep, Hiccup lay awake, planning, a fire ignited in his belly that tickled his heart, curled about his limbs and set him ablaze.

**A/N: "Aelfgifu" means "elf-gift" if anyone is curious, and it's pronounced "alf-hifu." Old English is a pain, so I don't blame Hiccup for screwing it up quite a bit. I had to translate a verse of it into English once and it was murder. The word order is all screwy sometimes and it's a nightmare. The song here is "Taikatalvi" by Nightwish and it's in Finnish. Check it out, it's very pretty.**


	8. I Feel Immortal

**A/N: HTTYD 2 was perfect, so for those of you who are (for some reason, lol) still on the fence about seeing it, go! For those of you who live outside the U.S and can't see it yet, you have a lot to look forward to! **

**I've written another HTTYD story called "Stay." Nice and angsty for my angst lovers. Check it out, I'm rather happy with it.**

**And without further ado, a nice long chapter for my lovely readers. **** Thanks so much for your support guys, I can't express how much I appreciate it!**

Hiccup woke from a cozy, pleasant dream the next morning feeling stiff, clammy and exhausted. A wet, uncomfortable feeling had settled into his bones as of late that made him wish desperately for a good warm fire to chase it away. He also wished he could go back to his dream, where he had been watching himself as a little one on his mother's lap. The wind had been howling outside, but it had been safe and toasty inside the house, and his mother had been making clothes for him because he was growing so fast and he kept trying to put one of her long braids hanging over her shoulder in his mouth and-

He groaned. Another side effect from not receiving a good night's sleep was the constant headaches that pounded behind his eyes, making him feel ill. And the fact that he missed his warm, soft bed so badly it hurt.

Soft, murmuring voices drifted across the cell, and Hiccup looked up just in time to meet the eyes of everyone in Aelfgifu's family looking right at him. He was instantly awake and shrinking back into his corner like a beaten dog that anticipates the whip from his master. Aelfgifu reached toward him beseechingly from across the cell.

"Wait, Hiccup, it's okay-" she began, but was cut off when Aethel growled low in his chest, stood up from his spot, and lumbered over to where Hiccup sat like an angry bear. Hiccup gulped audibly.

_I'm dead_, was the only thought that made nauseating cartwheels through his brain, _I'mdeadI'mdeadI'mdead-_

But Aethel stopped right in front of him and simply kneeled down. However, the suspicious glare never left his face as he regarded the scrawny Viking.

"I should kill you for speaking to my daughter," he threatened, cracking his knuckles.

"N-No blame you," Hiccup stuttered.

"I could kill you. Your neck is very scrawny. It would take nothing for me to snap it, or to crush your windpipe."

Hiccup had no reply to that except to bite his lip until it turned white.

"But since my daughter says you have a plan to get us out of here and we have nothing to lose, I will hold off."

The air in Hiccup's lungs left in a loud whoosh and his limbs felt weak in the wake of his relief.

"For now."

The Viking smiled shakily. "Again. No blame you."

Aethel crossed his arms, and Aelfgifu scrambled to his side, placing herself between him and Hiccup.

"Enough, father," she ordered, "You're not going to get any information out of him if he's too busy pissing himself in fear."

Hiccup felt like he should have been embarrassed by that comment, but he couldn't be when it almost came true. Aethel rolled his eyes.

"The fact that he speaks Anglo-Saxon is one factor that gives him any worth," he told Aelfgifu, "The other is that he may save us. So what is your plan, Viking?"

Feeling more at ease, Hiccup sat up straighter, and put on a crooked grin, "I think it will please you. Plan begins with you to kill me."

000

Aelfgifu didn't know how long she had been pounding on the trapdoor before one of the pirates finally got fed up with it and opened it. She was met with his glaring face and nearly quailed under it. However she remembered Astrid, the brave shield-maiden Hiccup had told her about and how she could kill dozens of Romans all on her own. And she remembered that she was the only one down here besides Hiccup who could speak Norse, and knew that this plan wouldn't succeed if she couldn't play her part. So, she set her will, determined to be as brave as a Viking, and irony on this thought was not lost on her.

"What d'ya want?" the pirate growled.

"We have dead here," Aelfgifu informed him, "Viking dead. Father kill."

To her surprise, the pirate laughed. "Wish I could have been there to see that! I'd have sold tickets!"

Aelfgifu didn't know what he meant by that, so instead she asked, "You remove body?"

"Hand 'im up," the pirate ordered, "At least the sharks followin' the boat will finally get a reward."

With that, Aelfgifu moved aside, and let her father lift the limp body of Hiccup up through the trapdoor. Once the pirate hauled the boy up by his armpits and re-shut the door, Aelfgifu sighed in relief. So far, so good. Hiccup was doing well (she never doubted that he would) and like he had assured her, the pirate was too stupid to figure out how a little Anglo-Saxon girl suddenly knew Norse.

Now it was all up to the scrawny Viking who had captured her faith with a smile and a song, and the irony on this fact wasn't lost on her either.

On deck, it was all Hiccup could do not to flinch at the pirate's rough handling or open his eyes to see how close it was to the edge of the ship. He felt the early evening breeze on his face, and knew that night would be arriving very soon, which meant he would have to act fast if he wanted to get the Anglo-Saxons out of here in the safe manner he had devised.

Hiccup barely bit back a cry of surprise as he finally felt himself flying through the air over the side of the ship. The air whistled by his ears for a moment, before he was met with the cold shock of ocean water. The breath was shoved out of his lungs from the impact, and it took everything within him not to start flailing in panic until he was sure enough time had passed. When he felt that it was safe enough to move, Hiccup's head broke the surface and he pulled air into his starving lungs, coughing and sputtering. He quickly located the anchor, which was hanging from the side of the ship, secured by a large chain, and swam strongly over to it. Though his progress was hampered by his metal foot, he still made it, and managed to climb out of the water and sit in the bottom curve of the anchor, hanging onto the main part with numb fingers for dear life.

Gods he was cold, and he wondered how far north they were. But that didn't matter now. The sun was sinking rapidly, the stars already beginning to appear in the sky above the line of orange and pink on the horizon. He had to locate the life boats, get all the Anglo-Saxons inside, lower them down, and do it all without being noticed by the pirates. That was why it was important that they do this at night, when there were far fewer crew members present on deck.

Luckily, the lifeboats weren't all that hard to find. He could see the noses of a few of them poking over the sides of the ship, while more hanging by ropes off the edge. It would be no problem to untie them because he recognized the knots. They were the same knots he usually saw on Viking longboats. Now the only problem was to stay warm and hope his teeth weren't chattering loud enough to attract attention.

And so there Hiccup sat for a couple hours at the very least, curled into as tight a ball as he could manage in his current position and alternately holding a hand under at least one of his armpits in an attempt to thaw it out while the other held on to the anchor. He could feel the salt from the sea crusting on his scalp and his hair drying stiffly. Ugh. He never thought he'd miss bath day so much.

Finally, the sun disappeared beneath the sea and the stars took over the sky. It was time.

His fingers were as warm as they would get, and luckily they were warm enough to feel the rope beneath his fingers as he set about untying the life boats. They would probably need most of them considering how many people were being kept below deck.

Once the last boat was untied and hanging considerably lower down the side of the ship, Hiccup decided that it was time for phase two. Poking his head up tentatively over the rim of the deck and seeing no one close by, he hauled himself up and over.

Hiccup thanked every god in existence that no one spotted him on his way to the trapdoor. When he reached said trapdoor, he knelt by the latch, fought with it for a minute, and then opened the door. His heart screeched to a halt in his chest when the hinges creaked loud enough for all the world to hear as he did so, and he sat perfectly still for several minutes.

Once again, the gods must have taken a vacation from their hatred of him, because no one came to investigate. He poked his head down, and whispered, "Time to leave."

He saw Aelfgifu first, her face a smiling beacon in the darkness below.

"I knew you'd come back," she whispered, "My father was convinced you had fled in a life boat and left us."

Hiccup heard Aethel snort in the background, and he laughed nervously in response. He guessed he couldn't outwardly blame the giant man with trust issues, not if he wanted to keep breathing. He rather liked breathing.

"Who is first?" he asked. Aelfgifu extended her hand to him, but was nudged out of the way by Aethel. A few of the women pushed him up from below while Hiccup pulled. Once he was safely on deck, he eyed Hiccup, grunted something that might have been a thanks, and turned around the help Hiccup haul the rest of his people out. Hiccup sighed patiently. He couldn't win everyone's trust, he supposed.

Little by little, quietly and carefully, everyone was pulled up through the trapdoor and directed by Hiccup towards the lifeboats. However, the instant they began to settle in, a pirate from the crow's nest he hadn't known was there cried out an alarm, sending Hiccup's heart flying straight up his throat. Every crew member the ship possessed came flooding up from below deck, cutlasses gleaming in the moonlight.

"Keep going!" Hiccup shouted to them.

Without thinking, Hiccup charged the nearest pirate, wrenched his cutlass from him with practiced ease, and quickly planted himself between the pirates and the escaping women. With a ferocity born from a hybrid of spending too much time with his dragon and his axe-wielding lover, he descended on the rest of the pirates with a snarl.

He was doing surprisingly well considering there were dozens of them and he was only one Viking with a bad leg and a sword he wasn't used to. But he was so nimble, so lightning fast in his movements that the pirates couldn't catch him before they were run through or beat over the back of the head with the hilt. Still, they weren't deterred, and Hiccup saw his opportunity to lead them away from Aethel and the women. He ran towards the main mast and began to scramble upwards, holding the cutlass in his teeth.

Yes! The pirates were following him up, so intent on catching him that they were letting their prisoners escape. He made it onto a beam, but before he could make it any further, the pirate from the crow's nest landed behind him and shoved him off. Hiccup fell helplessly before landing solidly onto the deck. The breath was knocked hard out of lungs and he couldn't draw in air again for several seconds. He saw white for a moment, and when he opened his eyes his vision was fuzzy. But even through his fuzzy vision, he could see the pirates advancing on him, swords in hand, teeth bared, wolves around a trapped sheep.

_Get up!_ Hiccup screamed at himself. He managed to push himself to his knees before his vision tilted dangerously and sounds were reduced to a deep buzzing. He tried to stand, but his body obstinately refused to obey his brain's commands. He knew it was over when one beefy hand closed about the scruff of his neck and began to lift-

And then it let go, and Hiccup heard the dull thud of a body hitting the deck. When he dared to look up, he was shocked silly by what he saw.

Aelfgifu. Standing over the body of the pirate. Still holding onto the hilt of a cutlass sword. There was a wild, animalistic light in her eyes that shone between her locks of messy hair. Hiccup recognized it as the kind of light he saw in Toothless' eyes when he was protecting his rider.

She had saved him.

Aelfgifu wrenched the sword out of the pirate and pointed it in front of her, blood dripping off the end.

"Leave. Him. Be," she ground out to the pirates, standing over Hiccup, who gazed at her in awe.

And then several things happened at once. Several pirates charged the two of them at the same time one yelled, "Shit, the prisoners!" At that moment, a large portion of the group ran to the edge of the boat, but it was too late. The boats were gone. Hiccup knew that because he could hear Aethel frantically calling for his daughter from a place too far away to be the deck. She must have jumped off just before the boat dropped, and the Anglo-Saxons had no idea how to get back up the boat, being all but unfamiliar with the idea of boats. So all Aethel could do was call for her, and it tore at Hiccup's heart to hear it.

"Aelfgifu, go!" he ordered, "I'll follow!"

She nodded and began to run…right into the waiting arms of the captain. He wrenched her arms behind her back, but not without difficulty; the little girl was thrashing and screeching like a wild dragon caught in trap, and from her tone, she was using every colorful curse she could come up with to insult the captain.

Hiccup began to race forward to help her, when he also found his arms pulled behind him. However, he put up much less of a fight, his head still spinning. A trickle of blood snaked down from his hairline to run into his left eye. He blinked it away, but it still coated his eyelid stubbornly.

"Well, don't you two look every inch the barbarians you really are," the captain observed, "How does it feel to not have a soul? You must not have one if you kill my men unnecessarily."

Hiccup swelled, a bestial growl rumbling in his throat. His patience had fled with the weight he had lost and the dignity that had been stolen from him by these men. Aelfgifu continued to fight, and Hiccup raised his head, glaring up at the captain from underneath his bangs, teeth bared in a vicious snarl while blood still ran like a river from his scalp and over his eye. His sides heaved with exertion, and despite his exhaustion, he suddenly longed to tear out the captain's throat, even if he had to do it with his teeth.

"If we're barbarians, then fine," Hiccup spat, "I'd rather act like a wild beast than like you. Wild beasts only taste blood when they need to survive, not because they want to see others suffer."

As if to punctuate his statement, his tongue snaked out to lick the blood that had slithered down to tickle his upper lip. He grinned like a predator anticipating the kill.

"Now," Hiccup said lowly, "You'll let her go, and you'll fight me instead."

The captain pretended to think for a moment, before he answered with a nonplussed, "No. No, I really think an action like this should be met with some sort of punishment, don't you?"

Hiccup's snarling face melted starkly into one of terror and his heart plummeted from its place in his throat to his stomach like a stone.

"Yes," the captain went on, tracing a finger up Aelfgifu's jaw which she promptly tried to bite off, "A special kind of punishment, perhaps?"

"No!" Hiccup cried, lunging forward, only to be held back by the burly pirate who still had him.

The captain regarded him with a raised eyebrow. "No?"

"Please," Hiccup begged. Aelfgifu stopped struggling, looking at him in open-mouthed shock.

"Please," he repeated, "She's only twelve, please spare her."

"And what would you propose I do? Someone needs to be punished, and I have her right here."

A pause. Hiccup hung his head, suddenly very weary. "Punish me instead."

"Hiccup, no!" Aelfgifu exclaimed, beginning to fight anew, "It's okay, I'm not afraid of him, I can"-

"You're sure?" the captain asked with a tilted head.

"Yes," Hiccup said in a voice eerily devoid of emotion.

"Very well!" the captain replied over the din of Aelfgifu's renewed curses, "Men, take them below! We have a punishment to devise!"

Aelfgifu screamed, "No! You idiot, don't do this! Let them punish me! Hiccup!"

Hiccup was suddenly reminded of another girl that had begged for him not to sacrifice himself, and he swallowed a sob that threatened to burst from somewhere deep inside his wounded heart.

000

It had been the right decision. It couldn't have been any other way.

Hiccup told himself this, yet he couldn't stop his body from quivering with fear even as he put on a smile for Aelfgifu. He couldn't fool her though; she was too busy holding his hand, and he was sure she could feel how clammy his grip was and how his arm was shaking against her.

"It will not be bad," he said, "There may be whips. But I'm used to dragon fire. Whips will be as flies."

Aelfgifu looked up at his face, and observed that there were two high spots of color in his cheeks while the rest of his face was white. His smile was more of a grimace and it looked like he was going to be ill at any second. She held him closer to her, and though she could tell he was trying not to make it obvious, he leaned into her, his terrified body latching onto her solid warmth and comfort as a means to keep ahold of his sanity.

Footsteps thudded above their heads and the squeak of the trapdoor opening came a moment later. The voice of a pirate floated down to them demanding that Hiccup come up on deck. Hiccup swallowed hard and stood, but looked down when Aelfgifu refused to let go of his hand. He stroked her hand reassuringly.

"It'll be okay," he stated, trying not to watch as he pulled his hand from hers almost in slow motion. The hand that had held his drew up to her mouth as she tried to stifle a cry. Hiccup tried to ignore this and scrambled up through the trapdoor before he was pulled out of her sight.

"This way," the pirate directed him, pushing on his back. He found himself being led to another storage room below deck, and once he crossed the threshold and adjusted to the poor lighting, he noticed that it wasn't just the captain there, but the majority of the crew minus a few members whom he could hear still walking around on deck.

The captain walked forward first, stopping only once he was directly in front of Hiccup. "I usually find punishments tedious, but I've been waiting for an excuse to execute one on you. I'm almost glad you let those prisoners go."

Hiccup looked over his head, not hard considering he was taller than the captain, and swallowed again. The captain stared at his neck, seeming almost entranced with the way the muscles in it flexed and the lump in his throat bobbed from the action.

"You won't be trying anymore escapes after this though," the captain warned him.

"I'll try every moment of every day from now until we reach port to escape," Hiccup whispered through gritted teeth.

The captain suddenly wrapped his fingers around Hiccup's neck, and Hiccup gasped, and then shivered in confusion when the captain's fingers caressed his neck like he was examining some fine silk.

"I doubt that very highly," the captain said, his voice taking on a husky edge.

The fingers travelled further up Hiccup's face until they began to trace that full bottom lip.

"Oh, what you do to me," the captain sighed, "You slay me you know."

And at this Hiccup wrenched his head away and snarled, backing into the now shut door behind him. He heard one of the crew members say, "I love it when they put up a fight," and it only made the adrenaline flood all the harder through his body His fingers scrabbled for the latch on the door, only to discover it was locked. The captain grabbed his wrist and held it up between their faces.

"Now now, no fighting," the captain said, wagging a finger, "You resist an inch, and the girl will take your place. Savvy?"

Hiccup's eyes widened into an expression of horror, body trembling under the strain of desire for fight or flight as the captain's words did battle with his most basic instincts. His lips worked, but no sound came out, trying to come up with a good comeback instead of the whimpers that threatened to spill out of him.

Before he was given a chance to answer, the captain grabbed Hiccup by the front of his shirt and dragged him over to the crowd of pirates waiting in the center of the storage room. A tight ring of large, hot bodies surrounded him, making escape truly impossible. He stood there rigidly for a moment, eyes darting back and forth, waiting to see who would try to lay their hands on him first. He felt very much like a cornered mouse being watched by several malevolent cats.

One hand from behind him ran over his shoulders, and Hiccup flung himself around to face the pirate who made the first move. However, as soon as he did, another pair of hands gripped his waist and pulled him flush against the body of another pirate, who managed to run his tongue up Hiccup's neck before Hiccup squirmed free. Before he could gain his senses, another hand slapped his rear. Yelping and blushing bright red with mortification, Hiccup whipped around yet again. This game of touch and tease continued for a while, the pirates playing with their prey before they sunk their claws into it. Hiccup's heart was pounding against his ribs and his throat became tight as it tried to hold back the little whimpers and yelps of fright that kept escaping him without his consent.

Suddenly, one pirate behind him caught Hiccup under the arms and lifted him clean off his feet, leaving him to kick helplessly in the air. He began to thrash like a thing possessed, knowing that they had tired of playing casually with him and were getting ready to get serious. He felt his metal foot connect with someone's face, and a rush of satisfaction when through him. However, the rush was replaced by a searing pain when a hand connected with his face in a vicious slap that whipped his head around. Hiccup could only pant and shake.

"Last chance," a voice growled next to his ear, and Hiccup recognized it as the captain's voice, "Take the punishment without fighting or else. It's up to you whose ass I tear up."

A whimper left Hiccup involuntarily, and with a great effort, he went limp. The captain's grin widened and one of his hands moved down slowly to the waistband of Hiccup's pants.

"Off with the pants!" one pirate catcalled, and the sentiment was echoed all around the ring.

Hiccup's heartbeat reached a deafening crescendo in his ears, and against his will a stream of nonsense began to pour from his trembling lips. It might have been sentiments along the lines of "Nononono please stop, you can't do this, she's waiting for me, I want to be pure for her, I love her pleasestoppleasestop _stop it_," but between the ringing in his ears and the increased volume of the lustful cries of the pirates, he couldn't be sure. He jerked reflexively as his pants and undergarments were wrenched down until they hung around his ankles. A choked cry left him as he felt the air begin to swirl around a part of him he wasn't used to exposing to the air, and the significance of it had Hiccup squeezing his eyes shut and turning his face away. The catcalls of "What a beauty!" and "I'm gonna suck him dry," as well as the wolf whistles intensified. Between those words and the rustle of clothing as it was removed around him in one cacophony of the calm before the storm, Hiccup wished dearly that his brain wouldn't be able to process what was happening to him and force him to pass out. Instead, his dark and terrified thoughts began to swirl together in a whirlpool of chaos he couldn't hope to discern.

The strain was too much, and Hiccup could swear that the rift in his mind formed at that very instant, a rift that made it so that he was only half aware of what was going on around him while the other half found a pinpoint of light in his subconscious and clung to it, bathing in the love, goodness, and simplicity the happy images filled him with.

_The halfway point in an evening where the sun's rays dance with the stars in the sky. Astrid laying him down on frosted grass while she leaned over him, her hair unbound, her eyes filled with teasing mirth as she kissed the end of his nose. She seemed pleased with his confused expression._

A large, hot palm laid itself flat over his limp length, and he felt it begin to rub him hard a moment later, fondling everything from the tip of the head to his entrance, not one thing being spared from the captain's eager touch. Hiccup was suddenly dropped on the floor. Stunned, he slowly made his way to his hands and knees, chest on the floor, rear bared vulnerably to the air, his head too dizzy with fear to lift any further.

Someone, it must have been the captain based on the grunt above him, began to prod his rear before it shoved itself in a moment later. A pair of hands manhandled his hips and pulled him further onto something that was far too large for the orifice it was entering into. Hiccup screamed, a high pitched sound filled with despair and visceral terror, burying his face into his arm and trying weakly to squirm away. But the grip on his hips was so strong he was sure there would be bruises there later.

"Oh yes, you're perfect!" the captain groaned as he began to thrust, "Nothing you can do now, is there?"

_Astrid kissing him on the lips playfully, before she pulls back a moment later and whispers against him, "You're perfect."_

"We could just continue until the sun rises," the captain continues. He picks up his rhythm. "Hell, we could continue until the world breaks apart. Would you like that?"

Hiccup couldn't help it; he began to cry. He didn't just cry, he sniveled like a starving infant, a creature who knows it's in pain but doesn't know how to alleviate it except to cry. He was searching for comfort that was too far away to reach him, a warm embrace he knew existed but existed in an entirely different world.

There were more hands on him, pulling and groping everywhere. Nothing was hidden, nothing was kept sacred for the one he hoped to share his marriage bed with one day. His body, one of the things he held most precious in the world because she thought it was so precious, was destroyed and reduced to a warm, wet set of sex organs for a few men to play with.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered into his arm, thinking of a smiling face framed by lovely blond hair and a heart purely for him, "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I love you, I'm sorry"-

The tirade was ended by one of the pirates who wrenched his head up from his arm with large meaty fingers and shoved their length into his mouth. Hiccup gagged and vomited, unable to stop the reflex. Noises of disgust broke out all around him, while a few, particularly the captain, who was still deep inside him, guffawed with amusement. He was grabbed by his hair and his head was smashed into the hard wooden floor as a result. Hiccup wanted to cry out from the additional pain, but it was difficult to do around a throat shuddering with dry heaves.

"_Don't be sorry," Astrid says to him. She gazes into his eyes as if she wants to dive into them and discover all the secrets they hold. "I know you are, but you don't have to be. There's nothing to forgive. Just hush."_

_She kisses him again, soft, slow, and sensual, and he drowns in her pleasantly. He doesn't mind if he never has to come up to breathe from this sea._

Still dizzy and woozy, another hand pulled Hiccup's head up by the hair and shoved themselves into his mouth. This time, the only resistance he offered was a muffled sob around the thrusting organ the tortured animal in him desperately wants to bite off. The captain is still riding him, and another pirate is down beside him and stroking the thing that was supposed to provide Astrid with the children she always chattered excitedly about wanting, the thing that was supposed to meet with her in a beautiful dance that he had imagined over and over.

But that was gone forever now.

"_I love you," Astrid whispers to him, "Don't cry. Just come to home to me, and it'll all be okay. Come on now, this way. Hiccup, why are you just sitting there? Come!"_

And though he wanted to follow her, the pirates violently kept him in the present, making sure not a speck of him was left pure for the only person in the world where it mattered.

000

The pirates only laughed as, what felt like a lifetime later, Hiccup struggled to draw his pants back up over his hips. This was very difficult to do, Hiccup realized, when your entire body felt numb and shaky with adrenaline and your knees kept slipping on the little puddles of your own blood on the floor. It was sad that managing to finally get dressed was a monumental victory.

Their laughter launched into raucous guffaws as the crumpled little Viking tried with every fiber of his being to stand, to get out of the horrible room that still smelled like sweat and rum and semen and _fear_. But his muscles had been reduced to the consistency of twitching dough. Every time he raised himself onto his elbows, his arms would simply give out and deposit him harshly back onto the floor. It was all Hiccup could do not to cry out in frustration; his will was steel but his body was limp water. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. His vocal chords were too raw and strained to produce more than a whisper now.

Eventually, the captain hauled him to his feet and all but carried Hiccup from the storage room. He didn't say a word, only gave Hiccup's rear a parting pinch, before he was depositing him back down the trap door.

Hiccup lay in a stunned heap, before a gasp and an exclamation of his name motivated him to lift his head. Aelfgifu was scrambling towards him, worry etched in hard lines all over her young face. She was saying something, but Hiccup's brain was so fuzzy and she was speaking so fast he had no idea what, although from her tone she sounded like she was asking what happened.

"I-It…was not whips, Aelfgifu," Hiccup rasped, "N-Not whips…"

He must have blacked out for a moment, because the next thing he knew, Aelfgifu was tapping the side of his face and asking him to stay awake for a moment more. He shook his head to clear it, but it only made the black at the edges of his vision pulse more. Hiccup felt the Anglo-Saxon girl tugging at his shoulders insistently, telling him to get up. Clinging to her voice like a lifeline and summoning every scrap of strength left in his exhausted body, Hiccup heaved himself to his hands and knees. He let Aelfgifu guide him to a pile of straw near his spot by the porthole, and he realized distantly that she must have gathered up all the straw in the cell and put in a pile as a sort of bed for his return. He tried to mumble a thank you, but it must have come out as gibberish, because she shushed him after several botched attempts.

Once he felt the straw under his fingers, Hiccup's body finally gave out, collapsing onto the floor. Aelfgifu gasped and caught his head before it could hit the floor, before she lowered it gently. Hiccup could feel himself drifting away immediately until a wake of terrible shivers brought him back to painful awareness. He was suddenly so cold, and it took him a moment to figure out that the pained wheezing in the room was coming from him. Hiccup grew frightened as his vision began to fuzz and blacken again.

A hand smoothing down over his temple reminded him that Aelfgifu was still there and obviously taking in his pained breathing and shivers as well. Her fingers drifted methodically to the pulse point at his neck, and then caressed back up his face.

"Your pulse is too fast and too weak," she informed him, "I think you're going into some kind of shock. But it's okay, you'll be alright."

She lifted one of his clammy hands and held it to her chest. "Breathe with me, okay? In….and out."

He did as she said, trying to wrestle the lingering adrenaline in his body into submission. When his breaths began to even out, Aelfgifu gave Hiccup his hand back, tucking it close to his body. She then scooted over next to him, gently placing his head in her lap, before lying down behind him. He felt her curl her body around him as best as she could, trying with all her might to transfer her body heat to him. She felt almost sick listening to the whimpers that escaped him with every exhale, the sounds jarred by the shivers that shook his frame.

As her warmth began to bleed into him, Hiccup let out a long, drawn out moan of relief and weakly snuggled back into her. He felt the weight of her head rest on the slope of his waist, and felt her arms wrap around him in the best comforting embrace she could manage.

As the blackness spread from the edges of his vision to blot out the light for him entirely, Hiccup thought he might have uttered one last "I'm sorry", before he let sleep, profound and emphatic, drown him in its murky depths at last.


	9. When Fear Force-Feeds Love

Astrid's mind had gone blank. What Hiccup had been telling her was too horrible for her brain to fathom, so it simply stopped trying to understand and only listened. But now that he had stopped speaking, it was like the gears inside it had started whirring again, letting all the horror seep into her chest to poison her.

She had watched Hiccup as much as she had listened, and what she had witnessed was something she could only describe as being like drawing an evil spirit out of a victim. Astrid had watched as his body had grown more stressed with every passing word; he had fidgeted restlessly, begun to pant in earnest, and had gotten whiter and whiter as time went on. Even now, he was still panting and shaking, the blood drained completely from his face, and he was swallowing convulsively every few minutes. Placing her hand on the side of his neck and stroking it, she could feel how hot it had grown, and feel his pulse beating hard against her fingers. Yet, once he had started talking he hadn't been able to stop, even when she told him several times it was okay if he didn't want to continue. She was surprised he had found time to breathe; it had all come out like lava from an angry volcano that couldn't be held back.

Speaking of angry things, it was easy to see that Hiccup's body was feeling pretty pissed that he had forced it to relive such things quite viscerally. He suddenly buried his head in his pillow and squeezed his eyes shut. His next breath escaped in a pained moan, and he swallowed again, not liking the way saliva was collecting so vigorously in his mouth.

"Hiccup?" Astrid asked, stroking his face, "What's the matter? What hurts?"

Her answer came in the form of a series of angry, vicious gurgles sounding from his thin belly. Astrid's eyes widened. Hiccup moaned again, and his pants became even shorter.

"I don't feel good," he told her, "I think I'm going to throw up."

Acting quickly, Astrid reached under the bed and pulled the empty chamber pot out, placing it in Hiccup's lap and helping him to sit up and lean over it. It wasn't long before a sickening burp forced itself up followed by his unfortunate dinner. Astrid stroked his sweaty hair during the entire spell, her soft words of comfort an undercurrent to the sounds of vomit splashing wetly inside the pot.

It was at this moment that Toothless' ears perked at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs to the loft, and a growl began to vibrate through his whole body.

Astrid looked up as well, wondering who on earth that could be. It was barely dawn, and she knew she hadn't called the healer to check on Hiccup today. So who…?

Her eyes widened in surprise when Valka appeared over the stairs. What was she doing back so early? She had said she would go with Stoick on his manhunt for Hiccup's captors. But it didn't matter, because Valka was putting down her pack and gasping in alarm when she caught sight of Hiccup's current position. She said his name and rushed over to the side of the bed, placing a hand on his heaving back. Hiccup's eyes rolled over to regard her, and through the glaze of sickness and stress there was a spark of recognition and relief.

"Mom?" he said, before another spasm rippled through his stomach and forced up sour bile. A long, pained groan followed the action.

"Yes love, I'm home," she answered, "Easy now, don't talk."

Luckily, the spell ended soon after and Astrid was helping Hiccup to rinse out his mouth while Valka put the chamber pot back under the bed. Without thinking, Hiccup collapsed against his mother wearily, and equally without thinking, Valka wrapped her arms around the too-thin body of her son.

Astrid watched the two of them, spellbound. It really was a sight to behold because it seemed so ordinary; just a mother holding her son in comfort. But the amount of instinct in the action was amazing to Astrid. Valka hadn't been around for the first twenty years of Hiccup's life and was just now learning how to be a mother, and Hiccup likewise was learning what it was like to have a mother. Yet, he had fallen into her arms and grasped her tunic while nuzzling his head under her chin so easily, and she had interpreted the pained look on his face as a sign that her baby needed her (he'd learn later that the annoying and charming thing about mothers was that, no matter how old you get, you're always their baby in their mind), and had reacted accordingly. Valka sat on the bed, holding Hiccup, kissing his forehead drawing him into her world of security. And Hiccup drowned in it, taking in her scent which he knew made up part of his own, and letting his own fears suffocate as they deserved.

Whether he meant to or not, Hiccup fell asleep a few minutes later, and Valka laid him down gently. Astrid placed her hand on the back of his neck, and sighed.

"He's still awfully warm," she observed, "Could be another fever. Perfect."

"I want to know everything that's happened to him since you brought him home," Valka said, "But you don't have to tell me until morning if you don't want to. Or, I suppose afternoon would be more accurate, since it's already morning."

Astrid tossed the blankets off of herself and crawled out of bed. "No. I don't think I'll be going to back to sleep anytime soon. We can go downstairs so we don't wake him. Toothless? Stay with him?"

The Night Fury huffed as if her question insulted him, and crawled onto the bed as best as he could, wrapping himself around Hiccup.

After the two women went downstairs, Astrid spilled everything she hadn't been able to share with anyone else in the village, including the story Hiccup had told her just now about his capture. When she finished, Valka was silent for several minutes, long enough for the morning light to turn from pink to orange. When she spoke, she sounded like she had just come out of a brawl and was worse for it.

"Stoick sent me home ahead of him because he figured Hiccup would need me. I didn't think it was the best decision. We still haven't found the pirates who captured Hiccup initially. But now…" she paused, her hands fiddling with the edges of her sleeves, "Now, I can see he was right. He…Hiccup, my boy…why would they _ever_…"

"I don't know," Astrid replied. She could feel her throat closing of its own accord, the grief finally hitting her full force, "But it made me think, with people like this roaming the world, how did we ever think _dragons_ were the monsters?"

Valka shook her head. Her hands suddenly tightened into fists. "Yes, it's a very good thing Stoick sent me home. In fact, those pirates better pray to whatever whoreson gods they believe in that I don't _ever_ meet them."

She lifted her head, and her green eyes (the origin of Hiccup's own intense green gaze, Astrid realized) met the younger girl's in a fierce promise. Astrid's own eyes locked with hers, and something sparked between them that grew into a hellfire of righteous fury.

Astrid's lips curved into a snarl, and she replied with deadly fervor, "Me neither."

000

Many hundreds of miles away safely from Berk, two ships lay anchored next to each other in the middle of the sea. One was a pirate ship, and it had certainly picked the wrong Viking longboat to run into that day.

Stoick and Gobber were beneath the deck of their own huge longboat since the pirate ship had been all but torn to ribbons and was only staying above the water by a prayer. While the Vikings salvaged what they could from the pirate ship and tossed the bodies of the dead crew members overboard, the chief and his right-hand were interrogating its captain.

The captain himself, even bound as he was with heavy rope and kneeling on the floor, didn't appear to want to talk too much. He just kept grinning with his too-few teeth and insisting they just kill him and get it over with. He did tell them he was a slave trader, but only because it didn't matter to him one way or the other if he told these Vikings he was a trafficker in human goods or a pig farmer.

"You Vikings think you can intimidate anyone because you've got axes the size of trees and arms the size of most people's legs," the captain scoffed, "What gives you the right to care how I make my living? The boy couldn't have been much use to you, especially since you let him go so easily."

Stoick held himself back from physically harming the captain with great effort, but his mouth took no such liberties. "That boy was my son, you worthless shit-heap! And since you're the one that took him and I'm the one with the huge arms and the huge axe and the one seeking revenge, I think I have all the right in the world!"

The captain's eyes widened in astonishment. "The boy's-?"

And then amazingly, he started _laughing_. Hysterically. He actually fell over on the floor, legs kicking out in his mirth. Stoick began to growl, and Gobber placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. Once the captain finished his fit, he sat up again and eyed them, giggles still shaking out of him.

"Oh, this is too good!" the captain exclaimed, "You let your own son walk into the hands of a pack of honor-less pirates, to be starved, live among the savages of Briton for weeks, and then the crew and I-oh, how rich!"

He doubled over again, and Stoick lost his patience, not that he had had much to begin with. He lifted the man up by the throat and shook him until he stopped laughing so obnoxiously.

"What did you do to him?" Stoick demanded, letting go of the man's throat so he could speak.

The pirate smirked after he coughed and caught his breath. "I take it all back, Viking chief. I think your son _was_ worth something. I mean, a pretty lad like that? You must have come across hard times at some point and found you could pass him around to the other men in your village and make a"-

He found himself being slammed to the ground by said Viking chief, who roared like a Grizzly in his rage. But he only kept speaking a river of acid that burned Stoick's ears to hear it.

"The last time I saw your brat, I was buried in his ass while he sucked my men's dicks. He screams like a little whore, that one. You know he did it so we wouldn't hurt the little girl we had in the cell? You should be proud of him! He's noble _and_ fuckable, what a perfect combin"-

The chief of Berk was seeing red. He smashed the pirate captain's head against the floor and laid a boot against his side, stepping down until he heard a rib crack and the man cried out in agony. Panting, Stoick picked him up and hurled him against the room's opposite wall. To his utter frustration, the captain sat up and began laughing again, although now there was blood smeared on one side of his face.

"Stop pissing around and kill me already," the captain demanded manically, "I'm more dead than alive now anyway."

Surprisingly, something in Stoick held him back through the red haze clouding his vision. He realized a moment later it was the sight of his son, a beaten ghost as they pulled him from the cells off the coast of Briton. And while this should have fueled his desire for revenge all the more, he suddenly knew that revenge against this man shouldn't be his to take.

"Kill me!" the captain demanded again, angrily this time.

"Stoick," Gobber growled, brandishing the axe attached to his arm, "Let me kill 'im. I'll rip 'im from his balls to his"-

"No," Stoick ground out, "He's not ours to kill."

"What!?" Gobber squawked, "Who else has the right to kill 'im if not the chief? The _father_ of the boy who he did this too?"

Stoick stalked over to the man lying in a crumpled heap on the ground and lifted him up by his shirt. He put his face right in the pirate captain's and said lowly, "I will not decide your fate, because when my son recovers, that will be _his_ job."

The pirate began to giggle again, and the giggling soon turned into full-blown hysterical cackling which set Stoick's hair on end and his blood boiling with fury.

000

Hiccup indeed fell into a feverish stupor for the couple of days that followed after he told Astrid his story. Yet, even as Astrid swore at him for being such an idiot in between bathing his face with a cold cloth and his mother fussed over him to the point where most would consider it annoying, Hiccup only felt a sense of relief. Telling that bit of his adventure had caused him enough stress to make him sick, but it was like sucking poison out of snake bite: it got worse before it got better. And even though his head pounded like a war drum and his vision swam in nauseating circles when he was awake, when he slept he slept like the dead, and it was bliss like he had never known.

Even though he was feverish enough to rival Toothless in temperature, Hiccup still surprised himself when he stated to Astrid one night, "If you don't want to marry me, I understand."

Astrid nearly dropped the load of firewood she was carrying into the room, and was saved only by Toothless quickly placing his head under her arms to hold the pile up. Once she recovered, she managed to rasp, "Marry you? Hiccup, you've never asked me to…"

"Oh. Oops." The mortification in his tone was unmistakable. "Well, then, forget I said anything. Stupid fever."

He went silent, but Astrid couldn't just let something like that drop. So as she placed the firewood carefully on the floor and placed a piece on the fire itself, she asked quietly, "What would make you think I wouldn't want to marry you?"

She heard Hiccup sigh like he had a boulder on his chest and it was squeezing the life out of him. "Only for the obvious reason. You know, the fact I have no dignity left and can never look anyone in the eye ever again. The fact that I was used as a toy by a bunch of toothless, sweaty old men."

Astrid closed her eyes against the bitterness in his tone. But surprisingly, after a few moments, she felt a chuckle bubbling in her chest as his words sank in, and she let it out. "Hiccup, dignity is not the problem. If I wanted someone who was dignified, I certainly wouldn't have chosen you."

Hiccup snorted, but it was not without humor. "Why thank you, you flatter me."

"But I know what you mean," Astrid continued, "And yeah, I've been waiting for you to ask me to marry you for a while, but only because tradition says that's what the man does."

"In that case, shouldn't you be proposing to me?"

"Logically," Astrid laughed, "But…I did want to marry you before."

The silence that followed was almost palpable. Neither of them even dared to breathe, either because they were afraid of shattering the fragile balance of the moment or the air was too thick to do so.

"And now…no, nothing has really changed. It can't change. You're still you, Hiccup. I see it, and leaving is not going to change you for the better, or me for that matter. When I think of not being with you…" she paused to finally face him, wringing her hands, "It's like trying to imagine living in a world without air or sunshine. I mean, even if you add a little rain to the day, the sun is still there, and you still need it to survive and you still thank the gods that it exists behind all the rain. Did that make sense?"

Hiccup raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, and the expression was funny even around the fevered glaze in his eyes. "So…you're staying?"

Astrid smiled, and crossed the room to sit on the bed next to him. "Sorry, but yeah." She leaned down and kissed his sweating forehead, murmuring against his skin, "That's what happens when you love someone to the edge of the world and back. It makes you want to take care of them through all their pain, and even worse, it makes you want to marry them and spend the rest of your life with them."

Hiccup laughed, although to Astrid, it sounded more like a relieved sob. "Stupid love," he choked out.

She kissed the bridge of his nose and let his damp bangs tickle her nose. "Yeah. Love_ is_ stupid."

000

That night, Hiccup's fever peaked, draining him of his strength so completely that all he could do was sleep, unaware of the three occupants standing vigil by his side. If love and loyalty could be depicted physically in Berk, this would be the image they would choose to represent it: a mother with her son's head in her lap, his intended lying flush against his back, and his dragon with his head atop his legs. The beauty of love, they might say, was that sometimes it was simple and instinctual and present in every move a person made whether they were aware of it or not. One thing Hiccup was profoundly unaware of was that he inspired this love and desire to protect in many, and this would be the reason his village would sing his praises as chief someday.

For now, the only thing Hiccup was aware of was the blood red images swimming in his subconscious, images the same color of his fever. A creature called Love battled with a creature called Fear, their war pounding in his brain and rocking his head back and forth sickeningly.

Love felt the warmth and protective embraces around him. Love felt Astrid's desire for him and responded, soaking it in and wanting to give her the world and every bit of his essence all at once. It wanted to call her his everything, to fit his mother into his expanding heart, and house Toothless as his soul. It basked in the care it had known very little of five years and promised to give everything that was in its power to give back.

But Fear had the upper hand, fed and tortured into rising up for four months. It grabbed Love around the neck and choked it to within an inch of its life. It placed itself to Love's lips and force fed it all the humiliation, the blood, the anger, the pain, the _rape_, and the one person he had met that he could never tell Astrid about, _ever._

Love recognized this person begrudgingly for saving Hiccup's life, but as far as it was concerned, her kind touches on his thighs and her soft breath on his neck never happened. Astrid was his only.

Fear reminded him of the pleasure house in Rome, and about how his story of depravity was far from over.

For now, Hiccup only whined in his sleep, an unwilling neutral party to their battle. But he settled and hunkered back down again when Valka shushed him, Astrid kissed his hair, and Toothless nuzzled against his legs, and Love and Fear fell back for now, snarling at one another.

**A/N: The amazing Tsukita has actually done art for this fanfic, art I say! I'm speechless! It's just a sketch for now, I've been told it will be colored and made even more beautiful. I squealed so hard when I saw it. When the final version is done, I'll put up a link for everyone. Haha, if anyone else has an itch to make fanart, you have my blessing. I may have to make fanart myself, we'll see!**


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